Standing Committee D

[Mr. Roger Gale in the Chair]

Identity Cards Bill

Clause 5 - Applications relating to entries in Register

Amendment proposed [this day]: No. 133, in clause 5, page 5, line 16, leave out paragraph (b).—[Mr. Carmichael.] 
Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.

Roger Gale: I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following amendments: No. 134, in clause 5, page 5, line 16, leave out
', and other biometric information about himself,'. 
No. 46, in clause 9, page 8, line 32, after 'allow', insert 'all of'. 
No. 165, in clause 12, page 11, line 8, leave out paragraph (b). 
No. 166, in clause 12, page 11, line 8, leave out 
', and other biometric information about himself,'. 
No. 174, in clause 14, page 13, line 15, leave out paragraph (a). 
No. 175, in clause 14, page 13, line 16, leave out paragraph (b).

Andy Burnham: As I was saying, the amendment would severely limit the benefits of the scheme and represent serious threats to its security.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) legitimately raised concerns about how his constituents would be able to get to enrolment centres and what would happen if they needed a passport in an emergency. We have said that the aim is to have about 70 enrolment centres throughout the country and it of course behoves us to ensure that they are fairly spread, thereby giving people ease of access. We are also considering the possibility of a mobile enrolment facility, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. 
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned people who require emergency passports, but there would not necessarily be a change for his constituents. People have to apply in person for an emergency passport at one of seven UK Passport Service offices, so the process should not necessarily change, although it may take longer for them to enrol. 
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) raised other points about access and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) tabled an amendment addressing similar issues, although it has not been possible to consider it in the time that we have for clause 5. I assure them both that the Government fully recognise that special  practices will have to be adopted to cater for the wide variety of special needs that people with disabilities have. During the UK Passport Service trial that the Government arranged, we were keen to listen to the concerns of people with disabilities and we have worked closely with organisations such as the Royal National Institute of the Blind, which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West touched on. I assure him that we shall continue to do that. Our aim is to ensure that the enrolment process is as responsive as possible to people with disabilities or particular needs. 
My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe tabled three amendments setting it out that reasonable provision must be made to assist those who produce medical certification showing that they are unable to comply with the normal procedures relating to registration. I understand his concerns in tabling those amendments and I am grateful to him for allowing me to put my assurances on the record. His amendments address the need for the scheme to be flexible enough to cater for the variety of situations that may make it difficult for people to comply with the requirement to enrol. 
I assure my hon. Friend that that flexibility already exists in the Bill. The Secretary of State is under a duty to act reasonably, to ensure sensitivity to the wide variety of special needs that people have—because of medical reasons, for instance—and to make appropriate provision to deal with those needs. The scheme will be fully compatible with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. We are confident that the scheme as conceived will take care of those points. 
Amendment No. 46 would require all fingerprints to be taken. I understand why the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) tabled it, but I assure him that it is unnecessary. Under the Bill as it is drafted, the Secretary of State can take all 10 fingerprints. In fact, it is possible to take 13 biometrics—the fingerprint readings, two irises and one facial biometric. Although I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, amendment No. 46 is not necessary. 
I pick up the point that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) raised about fingerprint technology. Let me assure him about that. The biometric trial was not a trial of the technology. 
It being five minutes past Four o'clock, The Chairman proceeded, pursuant to Standing Order 83D and the Order of the Committee [5 July], as amended, [this day], to put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair. 
Question negatived. 
The Chairman then proceeded to put forthwith the Question necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at that time. 
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Roger Gale: The Committee will be aware of the intention to sit after supper. There is likely to be a Division on the Floor of the House at 7 o'clock. I had intended to allow an hour for Members to have supper. Clearly, a series of Divisions would eat into  that hour to an almost intolerable and impossible extent. Therefore, at this stage I propose that the Committee will sit at 8.15 pm, or 15 minutes after the start of the second Division if there is one. I hope that that is clear.

Clause 6 - Power of Secretary of State to require registration

Patrick Mercer: I beg to move amendment No. 36, in clause 6, page 5, line 34, at end insert ''without reasonable excuse''.
I hope that the purpose of the amendment is self-evident. Subsection (4) states: 
''An individual who— 
(a) contravenes an obligation imposed on him by provision made under subsections (2) and (3), or 
(b) contravenes a requirement imposed on him under section 5(4) in connection with an application made in pursuance of such an obligation''.
The amendment simply proposes that after the reference to the ''individual who'' we insert the phrase ''without reasonable excuse''. 
There will be people who contravene such obligations and requirements imposed on them, but who have a reasonable excuse for doing so. For instance, how does someone who is terminally ill register? Will they be available? Do they have a reasonable excuse to contravene a requirement or obligation? Yes, I suspect that they do. What about people who are abroad at the time—perhaps not on holiday, but working abroad for long periods, or working offshore? I am also thinking of soldiers, sailors and aircraftmen on operational tours of duty, particularly Territorials who are often called up at short notice and, as we have seen over the past two or three years, who often have very little time in which to put their personal matters in order before being required to join the colours? There will be situations in which they clearly contravene an obligation or a requirement, but I suggest that they might have a reasonable excuse. 
What about those who are not of sound mind? What about those who are being looked after by others because they cannot look after themselves? What about those who need to have everything done for them? When the notice of contravention of the obligation or requirement arrives for such people, will they know what to do? How will that be served upon them? Do such people not have reasonable excuse? If they do not, we should take note of the bottom of subsection (4), which states that they 
''shall be liable to a civil penalty not exceeding £2,500.''
I am sure that a Territorial called up to serve in Iraq would be delighted to pay £2,500 for not having a reasonable excuse for being absent—and someone who is not in full possession of their faculties might be equally delighted. What about those who cannot pay? I wonder how many of the people who commit these crimes will be in a position to pay this sum. 
 Similarly, perhaps the Minister will give some thought to approaching the problem from the other  end of the spectrum. I mentioned refuseniks earlier, but what about the fabulously rich refusenik—the drug dealer who deals in, and lives on, ready money? He or she has no desire to become involved in providing information to the national register or, heaven forfend, to carry an identity card. 
If one can regularly afford £2,500, how often will one be fined that sum? How many times can someone be done for this particular offence? I appreciate that that is approaching the problem from a slightly different angle, but I am interested to hear how the Minister intends to deal with those who seem to have an excuse and those who want to make an excuse. 
Surely a test of reasonableness should be imposed to ensure that we have a list, or something else against which one can test the legislation, that determines whether an excuse is reasonable and that might give someone extra time to pay this sum, or that determines that someone will not be fined in certain circumstances. I appreciate that such a list may not be exhaustive—it would be an incredibly clever and lucky person who could come up with such a list—but that simple amendment would help to make things clearer and, by definition, make the measure much more reasonable.

Roger Gale: Order. A few moments ago, I spoke gibberish when I told the Committee what we were going to do. That proves that one is unlikely to be challenged if one says something assertively enough.
There will be a Division at 7 pm, so the Committee will sit at 8.15 pm. If there are two Divisions at 7 pm, the Committee will sit at 8.30 pm. I hope that that is clear.

Alistair Carmichael: I shall take your advice, Mr. Gale, about saying things with sufficient certainty that they will not be challenged.

Roger Gale: The hon. Gentleman would find it easier to be that certain if he happened to be sitting in this Chair.

Alistair Carmichael: There was bound to be a catch.
There is a great deal to be said for the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Newark. I say that because, read as a whole, subsection (4) does not allow the authorities any discretion in the imposition of these civil penalties. The expression is ''An individual who'' meets the conditions in paragraph (a) or (b), and 
''shall be liable to a civil penalty''.
If the power was permissive and allowed a civil penalty to be imposed, the question of a reasonable excuse would not be quite so pressing, but the Bill does not give that discretion. From a procedural point of view, the question whether the excuse was reasonable would still be thrown back on the person seeking to rely on it, so there would be no particular prejudice in that regard so far as the administrative authorities were concerned. 
The obligation seems to be particularly strict. In this morning's sitting, an example was given of some of the problems that can affect my constituency. Travel within my constituency, as well as to and from it, can be problematic. I am frequently booked to fly to  one of the outer isles in Orkney or Shetland, only to find that there are no flights that day because of fog, a storm, or whatever the particular season happens to produce. If one turns that on its head, the residents of Fair Isle have no scope if they are told that they must report to the van that happens to be visiting Lerwick on a particular day in order to provide their biometric details. Presumably the fact that Fair Isle is fog-bound, as it frequently is, would be a reasonable excuse, but there is no provision in the Bill, how will they be able to rely on it? What discretion is there? 
This is a fairly sensible and minor amendment that could in no way be regarded as wrecking. I hope that the Minister will give it a fair wind.

Edward Garnier: I shall follow on briefly from what my hon. Friend the Member for Newark said. We have opened up the interesting question of discretion. Of course, the Government have wrapped this up as a civil penalty. Therefore, it cannot possibly be a criminal penalty, and we do not need to worry about the points that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland made about discretion. No doubt a civilised arrangement will be arrived at, whereby if one has made a mistake or it is not one's fault, a civil servant who has responsibility for the conduct of this bit of Government policy will, if feeling benign, let one off. We cannot make legislation on the basis that we hope that people will behave in particular ways at particular times. As the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland made clear, subsection (4) refers to
''An individual who . . . contravenes an obligation imposed on him by provision made under subsections (2) and (3), or contravenes a requirement imposed on him''.
It is clear where the burden of performance is; it is with the citizen. I hope that the Minister can disabuse me of the impression that the burden of proving innocence is upon the individual and the burden of demonstrating that he should not pay the penalty is upon the individual, and that it is merely for the Government to assert. That is not a proper way to go about such things. 
The other matter is of less importance, but worth flagging up, is the standard of proof that will be required, either by the citizen to discharge the onus put on him or on the Government, or by whoever is seeking to impose the penalty, to prove the case that he wishes to prove. Few cases are decided upon on the burden of proof. However, it is important that we should be clear before the Bill becomes an Act what the Government intend. I assume, since this measure deals with civil penalties, that the standard of proof is the civil standard, namely the balance of probability. The Government are setting themselves a lower standard of proof than might be required if they were trying to extract the fine via the summary procedure in the magistrates court.

Andy Burnham: Clause 6(4) provides that a person who contravenes a requirement relating to registration shall be liable to a civil penalty not exceeding £2,500.  Amendment No. 36 limits the circumstances in which liability would arise to those in which the individual concerned does not have a reasonable excuse. If I heard correctly during the debate on the programme motion this morning, I sensed a feeling of defeatism among Opposition Members who thought that the Government were not listening to them. To show what a caring, sharing, listening Government we are, I am going to prove that we do listen. When the Bill was debated earlier this year, the hon. Member for Newark asked the then Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne), to reconsider this point, and he gave a commitment to do so. I refer the Committee to clauses 33, 34, 35 and 36 and, particularly in respect of the amendment, to clause 34(1)(b), which says:
''A person to whom a notice under section 33 has been given may give notice to the Secretary of State that he objects to the penalty on one or more of the following grounds—. . . that the circumstances of the contravention in respect of which he is liable make the imposition of a penalty unreasonable.''
That is one of the changes that has been made to the Bill. It is conceived in that way rather than in the way that the hon. Member for Newark suggests because it is important to understand the nature of the civil penalty regime laid out in the Bill. Liability arises as a consequence of the individual not taking an action. If the test were at the beginning and the Secretary of State had to consider at that point whether the requirement was contravened without reasonable excuse, the process would be different and the Secretary of State would be required to undertake an investigation and carry out a trial-like process. That would be at odds with the principle of a civil penalty. I should add that the aim of the penalty regime is not to raise revenue but to encourage enrolment in the scheme; that is all that we want to secure. 
The civil penalty regime is fair and reasonable because the opportunity to raise reasonable excuses by way of objection to the Secretary of State is straightforward and cheap for the individual, who does not have to take the matter to a court, although the process is backed up by a right of appeal to a court. The levy of the penalty must be considered in light of the Secretary of State's duty to act reasonably: his general obligation to discharge his duties in a reasonable way. If the Secretary of State were aware prior to the imposition of a penalty that the individual concerned had a reasonable excuse, it would be reasonable not to impose the penalty in the first place. 
As we shall see later when we consider it in detail, clause 36 sets out a code of practice for the operation of the civil penalty scheme that underpins the Bill. It sets out how the Secretary of State should consider a notice of objection under clause 34, which has been strengthened in light of the representations of the hon. Member for Newark during the last Committee and should take account of his concerns although it achieves them by a slightly different method. I take the hon. Gentleman's point that some people will be terminally ill or away with the armed forces. Those would, of course, be extremely reasonable grounds for not complying with an order to register; the Secretary of State, being a reasonable man, would take that into account under clause 34(1)(b). 
I move on to the point made by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland who questioned the use of the word ''shall'' and asked whether the system should be discretionary. Under the regime laid out in clauses 34 to 36, which we shall look at in more detail in due course, the Secretary of State has discretion about the size of any such penalty and about whether, on objection or complaint, a person should be liable to that penalty. The Secretary of State may impose a penalty but does not have to, having regard to reasonableness and all the circumstances. The penalty is not fixed but at the discretion of the Secretary of State. 
With those reassurances, I hope that Opposition Members will concede that we have acted reasonably and that the Bill has been strengthened as a result of the assurance given to the hon. Member for Newark.

Edward Garnier: The Minister may have missed my slight contribution to the debate. Will he deal with the points that I raised?

Andy Burnham: I believe that I have been dealing with the points raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman; I understood that he was reinforcing the points raised by the hon. Member for Newark. I was outlining how the regime will pick up the points about which the hon. and learned Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman were concerned: a test of reasonableness can be applied when somebody has an objection to being asked to register on the scheme. That is explicitly captured in clause 34(1)(b). I do not know whether that covers the hon. and learned Gentleman's point; I think that it does.

Edward Garnier: I am not sure that the Minister has quite gathered my points. I shall make them again in relation to the next set of amendments. Perhaps he can have another go then.

Andy Burnham: I do not want to labour the point, but the hon. and learned Gentleman was talking about burden of proof, and the scheme that we have outlined is a civil scheme, so the burden of proof is civil. It is not intended to be a criminal penalty or to work in that way. The court procedure—the procedure by which someone would object to the levying of a penalty against them—is set out in clause 35. If the matter could not be resolved at the earliest stage, that recourse is open, but we make it quite explicit that we believe that the civil scheme is the right mechanism to underpin this part of the Bill. We do not believe that people should have a criminal record for failing to comply with it.
We believe that the mechanism should be cheap, effective and simple all round, and if people have reasonable grounds for not complying with the request to enrol—a request that I would argue is reasonable, given that they will have had plenty of opportunity to hear about the date and that they will have been notified—the Secretary of State can take on board their reasonable excuse. Ultimately, the matter could still go to court. 
The hon. and learned Gentleman is right that the burden of proof is the balance of probabilities, and we believe that that is as it should be. It would not be right to clog up the criminal courts with such cases.  The measure is required simply to encourage people to enrol, rather than to penalise them or to raise revenue.

Alistair Carmichael: The Minister says that the Government do not want to clog up the criminal courts. Is that an indication that he anticipates that there will be a large number of such cases?

Andy Burnham: Not necessarily; perhaps the hon. Gentleman is reading more into my words than I intended. The point is that I do not believe that such cases would be an appropriate use of court time. The matter would be more properly dealt with by a civil route, through the process that begins with the notice to register. A simple breach of that notice will trigger a penalty under the Bill. At that point, it would be for the individual to write to the Secretary of State laying out reasonable grounds for having failed to register. Of course, the person could pay the penalty and accept that he or she should have registered, but he or she could lay out the reasons why he or she did not do so. If the intention was to register straight away, and if the person did have reasonable grounds, one hopes that that would be the end of the matter, but ultimately a person could take the case to a civil court who did not believe that the Secretary of State had recognised that their excuse was reasonable. That could be tested in a court.
That is the proper process to use, although it is backed up by what, at the end of the day, could be quite a serious fine. So, there is an incentive to register. We are about to get on to that in more detail. We think that we have the right system to underpin the Bill, and that is something that the hon. Member for Newark asked for in the previous sitting.

Tobias Ellwood: I have two questions. First, £2,500—the maximum amount—is a lot of money. Does the Minister have any idea what a standard fine would be for, say, someone who deliberately does not want to be on the register and is willing to test the system? Secondly, if someone decides that he or she wishes to pay the fine, would those details go on the system? If someone pays a fine, can that person avoid registering, or will the person eventually be dragged to the register location to have details taken?

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman asked about a standard fine, but that is not the kind of system that is conceived. We are talking about up to a maximum of £2,500. I hope that he will accept that the purpose of the amount, which is not insignificant, is that we want to give people a clear incentive to register with the scheme. If and when it is the law of the land to join the scheme, people should abide by that law. Of course, the Bill has to go through this place first, but if it does, people will be required to register, and failure to do so could incur a significant penalty.
There is discretion to ensure that the fines are used proportionately. I do not believe that it would be the intention to use the maximum fine all the time. The fine would be proportionate to the refusal to register.

Tobias Ellwood: A significant number of people, mostly homeless, have already come out clearly saying that they do not want to participate in, or have anything to do with, identity cards. That is why I  was enquiring how much the fine would be. Imposing a fine of £2,500 would affect their way of life considerably, because it is unlikely that they would have that amount of money.

Roger Gale: Order. I allowed the first question and answer because I thought that we might dispose of the matter fairly quickly, but we are actually now moving into the next group of amendments. It might be a good idea to return and deal with the current group, and we shall discuss those issues, if they still exist, in a few moments.

Andy Burnham: Thank you, Mr. Gale. We shall come on to the point that the hon. Gentleman raised. I assure him that nobody is going to be dragged—he used that phrase—to have biometrics taken. That is not the basis on which the scheme is envisaged. There will be no dragging of anybody anywhere to take anything. It is a scheme that will work by gradual encouragement. The hon. Gentleman mentioned vulnerable groups, but we have the potential within the Bill to make special provision for people in vulnerable groups, such as the elderly or the homeless. That discretion is in the system. The package of measures is reasonable, and on that basis, I urge the hon. Member for Newark to withdraw the amendment.

Patrick Mercer: I thank the Minister for his eminently reasonable approach and explanation. We shall attempt to be reasonable as well. The last sitting of the Bill, which many of us in this Room will remember, was marked by ill-humour, unpleasantness and extreme tedium, and I am so pleased that the Minister has been able to point out that, however small our achievements were with the last Bill, this is an achievement. It is not a party political achievement, but one that, if the Bill makes it into an Act, will make it a better Act. To that end, I am satisfied with the fact that we have the code of practice on penalties in clause 36. I was going to challenge the Minister on why we could not have the same amendment introduced here to clause 6, with the wording ''without reasonable excuse''. His explanation is extremely lucid. I hardly dare say the words, Mr. Gale, but I am now completely satisfied with what the Minister said. I am extremely grateful to him, and to his and the other Minister's predecessor, who listened to our points during the last debate. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Edward Garnier: I beg to move amendment No. 37, in page 5, line 40, leave out 'civil'.

Roger Gale: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 38, in page 5, line 40, leave out '£2,500' and insert '£1,000'.
No. 136, in page 5, line 40, leave out '£2500' and insert '£50'. 
No. 146, in page 5, line 43, leave out 'civil'. 
No. 137, in page 5, line 44, leave out '£1000' and insert '£50'. 
No. 39, in page 5, line 45, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£500'. 
No. 40, in page 6, line 1, leave out subsection (6). 
No. 41, in page 6, line 4, leave out '£2,500' and insert '£1,000'. 
No. 138, in page 6, line 4, leave out '£2,500' and insert '£50'. 
No. 147, in page 6, line 8, at end insert— 
'(7) Unreasonable failure to comply with a request of the Secretary of State under this section shall be a summary offence to be heard before the magistrates court with an appeal against a finding of guilt to the Crown Court.'.

Edward Garnier: I want to make it clear that the satisfaction of my hon. Friend the Member for Newark is limited to the answer that he received to the amendment to which he was speaking. For my part, since the Minister has taken us on to clauses 33, 34, 35, and 36, which I was going to come on to in relation to this group of amendments, many questions remain to be answered. I am with my hon. Friend in so far as the Minister provided some sort of explanation to the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend.
We are now discussing the appropriateness of the civil penalty regime and the size of the penalties that that regime will impose. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have tabled different amendments, but in essence, they deal with the same issue: what is the appropriate size of the penalty? The Government, in their Bill, say that £2,500 is appropriate, and between us, the two Opposition parties have put down other figures. 
I do not lightly dismiss the administrative advantage of having a civil penalty system. It saves the Government a lot of money and saves the criminal courts system the burden of having to deal with what one might describe as a ticketing process. I assume that the Government are trying to set up the equivalent of a parking ticket system for failures under this area of the Bill. 
If there is any greater area of dissatisfaction among the driving public apart from speed cameras, where there is no discretion, it is the administration of the parking system, particularly in London. I know that the Minister of State, who represents a London constituency, and the Government Whip will be only too aware of the huge amount of dissatisfaction that has emerged over the past few years as the parking ticket system in this country has been farmed out to private agencies. The driver who believes he is innocent of every offence has to go through every conceivable hurdle in order to establish his innocence under the parking ticket system. We are building for ourselves another, but more expensive, sort of car parking ticket system. 
The Minister, whether wittingly or unwittingly, slipped into the case that I am about to make, but as far as the citizen or the European convention on human rights is concerned there is no difference between a civil penalty and a criminal penalty; both are penalties and impose disobliging obligations on the respondent to the notice. I imagine that the first person to be caught under clause 6 for failing to obey an  obligation placed on him by the Secretary of State under one of these, as yet unseen, orders, will write out a cheque for £2,500 or some division thereof. Frankly, he will not care whether he has been fined by a magistrates court or a Crown court or whether the money has been extracted from him under some form of civil process. He will be concerned with the £2,500 sum. 
We are fooling ourselves if we think that we are setting up a nice friendly system. We are talking about coercion driven by money and the extraction of money from the individual in which the individual has to establish, albeit on the civil standard, that he is free of the obligation imposed on him by the Secretary of State. The situation gets worse, because the Secretary of State decides what the obligation is, whether the individual has passed or failed the test and whether he is satisfied by the individual's explanation. Then, of course, the Secretary of State decides at what level the civil penalty should be imposed. 
I am not sure that that is a fair system, even though the Minister said, with disarming candour, ''We think that this a fair system.'' He may think lots of things, but that does not necessarily prove the underlying assertion in his statement. I think it is an unfair system. Does that make it any different? We will learn from experience that the public will be increasingly dissatisfied for a number of reasons. First, because they are required compulsorily to register. Secondly, because they are increasingly required as a matter of routine—I accept, that that is not as a matter of legal obligation—to carry identity cards to explain themselves. I am talking about what will happen in practice and not about what the Bill says. 
The Minister may not accept my inference from all that is in the Bill and all that has been said by the Government during our deliberations here and on the Floor of the House, but I assure him that as a matter of practice people will increasingly carry the identity card because it will save trouble: it will save them having to go through various hoops, explaining themselves and so on. Of course, the Government will then get trapped into the flash-and-go false security of allowing the identity card to be the one and only document that proves bona fides and identity. I am afraid that we will reap that whirlwind in due course. 
One cannot look at the amendments without doing as the Minister invited us to do and considering the provisions that set out the regime in clause 33 and those following it. If one considers those provisions, the position gets worse. Throughout the process, the Secretary of State will make the decisions. He will be the prosecutor, the judge and the jury. It is to his benefit—I use the term impersonally—that the system is being established. 
When we object to having been penalised under that ersatz system, what are we to do? We are to go to the county court. I do not know when the Minister last went to a county court, but they are not always easy places to get to following the closure of a huge number in England and Wales. In earlier debates the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and my hon. Friend the Member for Newark exposed the difficulties that  would be felt not only by disabled people and others with impairments, but those in far-flung communities—in rural seats or in island seats such as the hon. Gentleman's. They will not find it easy to make their objection heard if they have to go to the county court or, I presume, to the sheriff's court in Scotland. It is a practical difficulty that I do not think the Government have got their head round, if listening to the Minister a moment ago is any indication of how far their thinking has gone. 
We are also concerned not only about physical access, but about the ability to appear at the county court. It was always said, I think by Lord Birkenhead, Lord Chancellor in the 1920s, that the courts of England are open to all, like the doors of the Ritz. [Interruption.]

Roger Gale: Order.

Edward Garnier: I was trying to listen to what the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) was saying. I wanted her to correct me if I had got the wrong lord.

Vera Baird: It was Lord Devlin who said that the law, like the Ritz hotel, is open to rich and poor alike.

Edward Garnier: I thank the hon. and learned Lady. Whether he was the originator of that comment—

Vera Baird: That is probably the only contribution that I will make to this Committee.

Edward Garnier: The mere presence of the hon. and learned Lady is an adornment and her silence speaks volumes about the value of the Bill. However, I am grateful to her for correcting me.
The short point is that following the huge curtailment of legal aid in both civil and family matters, and particularly in civil matters, it is now virtually impossible to get civil legal aid. I suspect that it would be pretty well impossible to get civil legal aid to go to the county court, or the sheriff's court in Scotland, to pursue such an objection. Yet again, there is inequality and no balance of arms. 
The Secretary of State has all the cards, makes all the decisions and may or may not at his own discretion let someone off or reduce the penalty. However, if that person objects, takes their objection into the formal court system and cannot afford representation, they will have to do it themselves. Otherwise, they will not be able to seek representation unless they can afford it. I am not convinced that the Government have thought that through sufficiently clearly. 
I am also concerned, since the Minister drew our attention to the regime under which civil penalties will be imposed, that yet again we have not seen a vital document: the code of practice. The Minister can stand up perfectly honestly, without attempt to deceive, and say, ''Do not worry, there will be a code of practice.'' Perhaps there will be, but would it not have been better if had we seen not only the 60 powers that the Secretary of State wants for himself but the code of practice. What else is hiding in the Secretary of State's cupboard that we need to see in order to get a proper view of the Bill? What else do the Minister or the Secretary of State wish to bring  forward that they have not thought of during the past three years or when the previous Bill was going through the deliberative process in this House? 
I register a general dissatisfaction with the way in which the Bill has been produced. I register a particular dissatisfaction with the way in which the Government have thought about clause 6, because it will lead to unfairness and unpopularity. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said on Second Reading, the Bill will be a plastic poll tax. Clause 6 gives us a good reason for saying that that assertion was true. It will lead to the failure of popular acceptance of the legislation. 
By our presence here as Members of Parliament, we all accept that the Government have a majority and therefore an implied right to get its business through the House. However, there is no point in the Government exercising that right unless, to balance it, they have popular consent. I do not mean popular approval of what legislation implies or carries with it, but a general consent that the process is right and that what the Government are doing is broadly right. The Conservative Government fell foul of that in the 1980s by producing a Bill that passed Parliament—we had a majority—but that did not have popular consent. I speak of the poll tax. The present Government are doing precisely the same with the Bill.

Nick Palmer: This morning's survey says that 65 per cent. of the population would give precisely the kind of general consent to which the hon. Gentleman refers. Does he anticipate that the Labour party will get 65 per cent. at the next election? I would welcome that.

Edward Garnier: I often find the hon. Gentleman's interventions a little difficult to follow, fascinating though they doubtless are. I have absolutely no idea what percentage of the vote the Labour party will gain in the next election in 2009 or 2010. However, I assure the hon. Gentleman that dissatisfaction with the identity card system gets greater as the practical consequences emerge.
When the ID card system started, there was about 80 per cent. approval for this sort of arrangement. About a fortnight before the Bill came to Committee, an ICM poll found only 55 per cent. approval. A couple of days before Second Reading, a Populus poll found only 45 per cent. approval. I accept that most of that was based on the cost to individuals; but the cheque that one has to write to get a compulsory entitlement card is not the only cost. There are hidden costs—social, political and others. The hon. Gentleman's intervention reveals a hideous naivety, which the Government may come to regret.

Patrick Mercer: On my hon. and learned Friend's last comments, I wonder whether the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) would find a study of the Australian experience of identity cards instructive. In theory it was hugely popular, but after explanation it became deeply unpopular.

Roger Gale: Order. I shall not tempt the hon. and learned Member to go down that road. He was perfectly in order in replying to an intervention, and if hon. Members do intervene they must expect a reply; but that was a response too far.

Edward Garnier: None the less, Mr. Gale, my hon. Friend's intervention is on the record. Were I not taking part in this debate, and I were to read the Hansard report of it, I would say, ''There is a wise remark.''

Alistair Carmichael: In view of your last comments, Mr. Gale, I have decided not to intervene.

Edward Garnier: Were I to read that intervention in my leisure hours, I would say, ''There, too, is a wise remark.''
I hope that I have outlined sufficiently my concerns about that aspect of the Bill in dealing with my amendments and those of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland in relation to ''civil'' and about penalties. I hope that I shall not lose my political alliance with the hon. Gentleman when I deal briefly with amendment No. 147, which would insert a new subsection into the clause, making unreasonable failure to comply with a request by the Secretary of State under the clause 
''a summary offence to be heard before the magistrates court with an appeal against a finding of guilt to the Crown Court.''
I was previously admonished by the hon. Gentleman for my ignorance of the Scottish legal system, and I had to go down on my knees and plead guilty to that. I suspect that he would find that his amendment would do just as well if it stopped after the words ''summary offence'', because all that follows is surely implied. A summary offence will necessarily be tried by magistrates, and there is a right of appeal to the Crown court. However, it is just as well for those who are neither English nor Scottish lawyers, nor defendants, that the details are pointed out in the amendment.

Alistair Carmichael: I take the advice of the hon. and learned Gentleman about my amendment No. 147. I understood him to be saying that it is not necessarily wrong, but that the latter part is at least redundant. I resort, as often happens in Committee on such occasions, to saying that it is offered as a probing amendment and that, therefore, just about anything is permissible.
The amendments in the group that I have tabled are several in number—Nos. 136, 146, 137, 138 and 147—and they need to be considered as a whole. Jointly, they would remove the question of civil penalties, so that the penalty would become criminal rather than civil under amendment No. 147, the penalty for which we want to reduce to £50 instead of £2,500. They are probing amendments and I do not anticipate pressing any of them to a vote. 
The issues that I want to tease out are, first, why the Government have chosen to proceed under a civil penalty regime, rather than under criminal sanctions. I do not expect too lengthy an answer from the Minister about that, because, given how the groupings have worked out, the question has already been explored in  some detail. The principal advantage of pursuing a criminal rather than a civil route is, as we see it, the higher standard of proof—proof beyond reasonable doubt, rather than on the balance of probabilities—and I suggest that that would be an important safeguard for someone who could be subjected to such a penalty. 
I have proposed £50 as the penalty, but it could just as easily have been £5 or £500. My intention is to establish why the Government have settled on the figure of £2,500. Does the Minister anticipate that the code of practice will establish various spines for fine levels, or will the matter be at the unfettered discretion of the Secretary of State? I echo the words of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough about the desirability of an early opportunity to see a draft of that code of practice. 
Others have mentioned the question of drawing parallels with the poll tax, which is interesting. I would like some slight clarification. Does the Minister envisage the penalty for non-payment being recovered by civil diligence, which in Scotland still means the process of poinding and warrant sales? He may be aware—as is, I suspect, the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West—that the last time a Government introduced a poll tax, plastic or otherwise, the process of poinding and warrant sales caused considerable political excitement north of the border. I will be interested in how the politics of this proposal play out if the Government intend to proceed in the same manner.

Andy Burnham: Amendments Nos. 38, 39 and 41 would reduce the maximum civil penalty that may be imposed under the Bill. There would be a reduction from £2,500 to £1,000 for a contravention of one of the requirements in subsections (2) or (3) in respect of registration, a reduction from £1,000 to £500 for a contravention of a requirement set out in subsection (6) and a reduction from £2,500 to £1,000 for each contravention of a notice requiring the person to register subsequent to a contravention by him of an initial requirement to register. I shall deal with those amendments before turning to those tabled by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland.
The hon. and learned Member for Harborough raised concerns about the location of courts and people not wishing to pay such hefty fines. The easiest way for people to deal with such concerns is to register within the time set down by Parliament. He may not like that, but if the law of the land requires people to register on the scheme, the easiest way for them to avoid all the horrendous circumstances that he laid out is simply to register and enrol themselves on the scheme. If that is too difficult and they fail to do so, and they do not have a reasonable excuse, the next easiest thing is to pay the penalty they will incur. As we have already discussed, the Secretary of State will listen to and take account of a reasonable excuse. 
In introducing the amendments, the hon. and learned Gentleman barely touched on why the Opposition want to reduce the figures from £2,500 to £1,000. He expounded an extreme libertarian position and invoked speed camera martyrs and people concerned about the activities of private parking  wardens to make his case, which, basically, is that there should be no such scheme or ability to enforce one. That may be his position, but it does not help us to understand the amendments. 
The Government have gone for a penalty of £2,500, which will be a maximum. It will be for the Secretary of State to take into account a variety of factors in deciding on an appropriate fee to levy. Of course, such factors might include an individual's financial circumstances.

John Robertson: Perhaps my hon. Friend can clarify something and thereby help the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. Could the fine possibly be £50?

Andy Burnham: That is extremely helpful, because it could. The Secretary of State has that discretion. We entirely understand the concerns that the penalties might impact disproportionately on those least able to pay, but the point is that the penalties are maximums, not fixed penalties. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. Lesser amounts can be paid, depending on all the circumstances, and they will be determined case by case.
The hon. and learned Member for Harborough complains about the lack of a code of practice, but clause 36, which we will consider in detail later, provides in a clear way the terms of the code and how it will operate. The fact that there is a code of practice will reassure people that they will receive a fair hearing should they be in that position. We have already added the test of reasonableness, which the Secretary of State will be required to consider. That is backed up by the code of practice. 
The concerns that have been raised will not arise, and the locations of courts and the geographical spread are not relevant. The courts are a last resort. People will be given every opportunity to register under the scheme, and the intention is to encourage them to do so. It is not a means of penalising them or raising revenue. Popular consent was referred to, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe said, the scheme has strong popular consent and I believe that some of the scare stories that have been put about have undermined the figures. 
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland asked, ''Why a civil scheme?'' We touched on that when we discussed the last group of amendments. We think that that is the right way to underpin the scheme. We do not want these matters to have to be dealt with by the criminal courts—there is no need for Crown Prosecution Service or police involvement—and it would not be right to give people criminal records if they failed to comply with requests to register. We do not want to weald the threat of imprisonment for failure to pay, but we do want a scheme that is simple and easy to administer and that enables people to be registered. We do not want people to breach the law of the land; we want them to register when that becomes compulsory. 
It has been said that there is a higher standard of proof in the criminal court. That is correct. The hon.  Member for Orkney and Shetland is a lawyer, and perhaps that provides him with more comfort. However, we have already placed in the Bill a code of practice and a test of reasonableness. I hope he accepts that those will enable people to put their cases properly and to be heard fairly under the system. 
The maximum penalties must be high enough to act as a deterrent, so that people do not choose not to register. The amendments that would reduce the maximum penalty to £50 would render the scheme vulnerable; it would not be a serious incentive to people to comply with the law and to register. 
Amendment No. 41 relates to penalties for subsequent failures to register, and amendment No. 40 would remove clause 6(6) completely. The effect would be that the Secretary of State could not impose further fines for continued failure to register. That would not be in the spirit of the scheme; it would undermine the premise of the measure, which is to give a series of positive incentives to register. 
It is proper for the Secretary of State to determine what a proper fee should be, and it should be able to be repeated if people persistently fail to register. As I have said before in response to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, the easiest way to avoid all that is to obey the law of the land. That will be a matter for the Government of the day, when they consider whether to make the scheme compulsory. If the power is invoked and used, it will be fair for everybody to be required to register. It will be the will of the House that people should do so, and unless they have reasonable reasons, they will be expected to do so. I think I have touched on most points that hon. Members raised. 
Amendment No. 139 would remove clause 6 from the Bill altogether, which would in effect take away the compulsion to register. As the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland knows, the Government's intention is that the scheme will be fully compulsory. [Interruption.] Excuse me, Mr. Gale. I would like to withdraw the comment about the amendment. I thought the hon. Gentleman had tabled an amendment to remove the clause altogether. 
Amendment No. 147 would create a criminal offence—the summary offence of failing to comply with any requirement of clause 6. No penalty is mentioned, but even if it were a moderate one, a person who failed to comply on more than one occasion would end up with a criminal record. As I have tried to explain, it is not our intention to penalise in that way people who persistently fail to register. The aim of the regime is to encourage people to see that it is in their financial interests and in their own best interests to comply and to register with the scheme. We do not think it appropriate or sensible to give people a criminal record. 
I hope that, with those remarks, I have answered some concerns set out by Opposition Members. It is not our intention to penalise or clobber people with unreasonable fines. Our intention is purely for people to be registered with the scheme as soon as is  practically possible once the House has passed a compulsory scheme. In that spirit, I hope Opposition Members will not press their amendments.

Edward Garnier: Perhaps not for the first time, I shall disappoint the Minister, because I am not at all convinced by anything he has told us today. He says that it is not his intention to clobber people or give them criminal records. Well, it may not be, but that will be the effect of what he does. I can see that there is a distinction between a civil penalty and a criminal fine, although from time to time even the Minister slipped into the confusion of describing the penalties as fines. I know that he did not mean to, but that is how the penalty will be seen.
If the Minister—having studied the Bill, considered the matter quite carefully and read the notes with which he has been provided to answer these points—still calls it a fine by mistake, surely our constituents will be confused and will see the penalty of £2,500 or any subdivision of it as a fine. It is a penalty and, as I said earlier, the European convention does not draw a distinction between a criminal and a civil penalty. 
I want to know, although the Minister was not able to tell me, whether the civil penalties will be registered as county court judgments if they are not paid and whether bailiffs will turn up at people's doors. I think that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland mentioned a Scottish process. Civil penalties, if they are not paid and are the subject of county court proceedings, will presumably become the subject of bailiff proceedings and yet again we will have the rather unattractive sight of bailiffs turning up at people's houses to take away their furniture or other belongings to demonstrate the Government's desire that people should be coerced into doing what they say. But that does not matter, of course, because the Government have ''strong popular consent'' for the measure. 
I hope that that little phrase will be hung around the Minister's neck between now and the next election, because I can assure him that the measure has no strong popular consent. In so far as it ever did, it is decreasing by the day, and clauses such as this will lead to the consent disappearing to nothing.

Ben Wallace: Does my hon. and learned Friend fear that, given that the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly say that they will not support ID cards—even my local Labour-led council, which covers Lancaster and Morecambe, has come out against them—we may get into a situation similar to the one with the poll tax, or community charge, when there was mass refusal to take part in the system, which inevitably damaged the credibility of the whole scheme?

Edward Garnier: The Minister accused me of being an extreme libertarian. I have been accused of many things in my time, but being extreme is not one of them. I certainly am not about to encourage members of Lancaster city council to do as the Clay Cross martyrs did, or other members of the Government in Scotland did, but that is an inevitable and foreseeable consequence. It may be unintended, but it will happen. Nothing the Minister has said has altered my view that  the clause is the worse for being unamended. On this side of the Committee at least, we stand for the rights of the citizen and for freedom under the law. I hope that the Committee's opinion, in so far as it has been expressed, will be tested by a Division.
Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 9.

Question accordingly negatived. 
The Chairman, being of the opinion that the principle of the clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in the course of debate on the amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put the Question, pursuant to Standing Orders Nos. 68 and 89, That the clause stand part of the Bill:— 
The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 5.

Question accordingly agreed to. 
Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7 - Procedure for orders under s. 6

Alistair Carmichael: I beg to move amendment No. 151, in clause 7, page 7, line 3, at end add—
'(7) Orders made under section 6 shall be considered to be primary legislation for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998.'. 
The amendment is probing and we can probably deal with it in fairly short compass. I tabled it because the clause is interesting to say the least, and I am keen to have more of the Minister's and the Government's thinking on it on record. 
The procedure covers orders that contain provision for compulsory registration. It lays out a process that involves the preparation and publication of a report that sets out a proposal for it to include the Secretary of State's reasons for making the proposal, for the report to be laid before both Houses and for each House to have approved the proposal in the report, with or without modifications, as well as the draft order. I have read the clause short, but that will be its effect. 
I stress that the amendment is effectively a probing amendment. Its terms are such that, for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998, the orders would be considered primary legislation. The distinction is that primary legislation requires to be certified by the Secretary of State—the Home Secretary, I think, in this case—and that the legislation is compliant with convention rights—[Interruption.]

Roger Gale: Order. There are far too many conversations taking place.

Alistair Carmichael: Thank you, Mr. Gale. Primary legislation, however, cannot be struck down. It can be disapproved by Parliament, which is what happened with the Law Lords in respect of the detentions at Belmarsh and the anti-terrorism legislation that we dealt with towards the end of the previous Parliament.
Secondary legislation is open to challenge and the nub of the point that I want to bring to the Committee's attention is whether the clause will remain secondary legislation for the purposes of a Human Rights Act challenge? Is it something that, for example, could be struck down by a court making an order if it felt that the necessary conditions had not been met? It would be infinitely preferable that, for a scheme to include an element of compulsion as opposed to a voluntary scheme, which we currently have—nominally, least—we proceed by way of primary legislation. Clearly, the Government take a different view, and I want to the Minister to explain the thinking and reasons behind that different view.

Edward Garnier: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The points that he made are another way in which to attack my worries about the 60 unseen and unheard of powers that the Secretary of State is giving himself under the Bill. There are good arguments to be voiced about the value of the amendment and the hon. Gentleman has made them.
However, I am worried that the process by which Parliament can deal with such matters will be constrained by the regime under the Bill. Not only can the courts strike down secondary legislation, so it might be thought that secondary legislation is a power that would be better for us, but, more to the point, in an emergency, Ministers can amend secondary legislation without parliamentary approval. Powers in the Human Rights Act are given to the Minister to amend legislation that, in this case, will be matters of some worry. I shall leave it at that, because I know that the general point that the hon. Gentleman made was better made by him than by me. 
It is important that we never leave off discussing and putting forward our concerns about the way in which legislation increasingly empowers Ministers to do things over which we have no control. The Government find it convenient to legislate in that way, and that is a problem not just with this Bill, but with all sorts of other legislation. It is increasingly the way in which modern legislation is constructed, and it is just an enabling system for Secretaries of State to hang secondary legislation, giving themselves the power to do this, that and the other. In this Bill, it  reaches the level of 60 individual powers, and I am not sure that that is a good way to run a country.

Andy Burnham: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland for tabling the amendment, because it is an important point. It implicitly acknowledges that although the super-affirmative procedure outlined in clause 7 is in fact secondary legislation, it is closer to primary legislation in terms of parliamentary scrutiny than other forms of secondary legislation.
The hon. and learned Member for Harborough raised some concerns. The process is laid out in such detail, and, for precisely those reasons that we discussed during the debate on the previous clause, Parliament has a commanding role in passing whatever is to be passed. We recognise the seriousness of a request to the British public for people to register under the scheme. For that reason, it is right and proper that their parliamentary representatives have full opportunity to scrutinise the Government's proposals and that Parliament has the ability as laid out in the clause to amend them.

Edward Garnier: I am sure that all that the Minister says is entirely true, but does he agree that under the clause 7 procedure, Parliament has no ability to amend the secondary legislation before the House? There is no guarantee that whole rafts of powers and statutory instruments will not be placed in one debate that, if the practice in this and the previous Parliament is anything to go by, will be limited to no more than 90 minutes, and, possibly, only to 45.

Andy Burnham: I refer the hon. and learned Gentleman to clause (7)(2)(c). It talks of a procedure in which a
''report has been laid before Parliament and each House has approved the proposal contained in the report, either with or without modifications''.
I put it to him that that could not be clearer. 
Mr. Garnier rose—

Andy Burnham: Let me finish. It could not be clearer that the House has the opportunity to modify the proposals laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State. In that way, the provision is subject to the fullest possible scrutiny, which is why I said to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that it mirrors primary legislation and that it almost is primary legislation. In effect it is primary legislation, although it will still be taken under a secondary procedure.

Edward Garnier: Since the Under-Secretary is moving in my direction, I want to see whether I can push him a little further. I want him to be clear with us about the modification. If he means amendment, why does he not say amendment? Does the modification refer to the proposal, meaning one of the powers that the Secretary of State is reserving to himself, or to the report? We must be clear. The report may be modified, but it may contain within it in an unmodified or unamendable form, a proposal that is the statutory regulation. Although I believe every word the Under-Secretary says—of course I do—we must be clear about the English, and about what he means and what  he intends. What he says now will be relied on by other people in due course.

Andy Burnham: The hon. and learned Gentleman began by saying that he was glad that we were moving in his direction. The clause is in the Bill, and perhaps if he had read it carefully, he would have seen that whether it is modifications or amendments, it does not matter, the effect is absolutely—[Interruption.] Modifications is absolutely the same thing as amendments. If the hon. and learned Gentleman would like to tell me the difference between them, I would be interested to hear it, but the effect is the same. As the clause sets out, Parliament has the power to consider the report that the Secretary of State has laid before it. Each House will have the opportunity to approve the proposal, with or without modifications, and the order on which both Houses vote then gives effect to it, modified or not. The provisions could not be clearer.

Alistair Carmichael: I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for giving way, because I am curious as to how a report can be modified—or, if he would prefer, amended—under current Standing Orders. Does he envisage that that would be done on a debatable resolution or would the report itself be modified, which is what the Bill seems to suggest? If that is the case, are we talking about something closer to the procedure that we undertaking here, in a Standing Committee or perhaps in a special Committee?

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman is correct. The proposal as outlined in the clause is for the report to be modified by the House. My understanding is that hon. Members would have the opportunity to move amendments to the text and that the House would have the opportunity to vote on those amendments. The report, as amended, would form the basis of the proposal that the House as a whole would accept or reject.
As a new Minister and a relatively new Member, I think that we are in fairly new territory in parliamentary terms. I am trying to think of parallels. I think the system that was conceived under the tuition fees Bills, in terms of raising the cap on the maximum fee that can be charged, is analogous to the mechanism proposed. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members will recognise that the strength of the procedure is its ability to take on board the concerns that have been expressed about the seriousness of going to a fully compulsory scheme.

Alistair Carmichael: I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for giving way, because we have come to the nub of the matter. I cannot think of any provision in Standing Orders that would allow amendment of a report in that way. If the report comes as part of secondary legislation, the matter is quite clear. No power to amend secondary legislation is given to this House, although it is given to the other place, so what parliamentary procedure would be followed?

Andy Burnham: The Bill lays the basis on which Parliament would consider the report that was laid by the Secretary of State and from which any such order would emanate. That would be the process. There  would be a debate on the content of the report and, as the Bill explicitly lays out, it is amendable. I shall have to come back to the hon. Gentleman on what the parliamentary process would be and consider his point about being absolutely clear that the procedure is fully compliant with Standing Orders.
I am pretty confident that the procedure as outlined in the Bill is consistent with the procedures of the House, the intention being—it is important to talk about the intention—that hon. Members from all parts of the House have the chance to consider and amend the proposal being put forward. We should bear in mind that the Secretary of State might put forward quite a technical proposal. It could specify a staged roll-out or implementation of registration. The proposal might be quite detailed, so the amendments could be technical. 
That is the commitment that the Government have given. It would perhaps be easier not to open up the process to that level of scrutiny, but we believe that it is right to do so. The House would have the ability to accept or reject the order, as amended. If the hon. and learned Gentleman wants reassurance on precisely how the House authorities would view such a process, I will get back to him on that.

Edward Garnier: Will the Under-Secretary reassure me on another point?

Andy Burnham: I will try.

Edward Garnier: The Under-Secretary has laid great stress on the fact that ''modification'' is interchangeable with ''amendment''. Presumably ''modification'' was included in the Bill rather than ''amendment'' for a reason? When we debate making changes to legislation, we usually discuss amendments; the Chairman calls an amendment, and he might say that with it, it will be convenient to discuss certain other amendments. He does not call a modification, and say that with it, ''modifications of the following nature'' will be discussed. Therefore, I am suspicious—as, perhaps, is the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, but he may be more polite than I am—that ''modification'' is a weasel word that will be used in a different way from ''amendment''. Will the Under-Secretary make it clear that ''modification'' is intended to be interchangeable with ''amendment'', and if that is the case, why does he not use ''amendment''? Will he also make it clear that the ''modifications'' referred to in subsection (2)(c), which mean ''amendments'', are a power available to both Houses, because there is concern that, by the use of language, the Under-Secretary is trying to present a case that might be misconstrued in due course?

Roger Gale: Order. I think that I have been fairly tolerant. I will allow the Under-Secretary to answer that point, after which the hon. and learned Gentleman might feel obliged to intervene again.

Andy Burnham: I like to think of myself as a plain-speaking northerner, so I apologise if I am not making myself clear. If I have to go through this again for the benefit of the hon. and learned Gentleman, I will do so. He asked me whether this would be amendable by  both Houses. That is clearly and explicitly stated in subsection (2)(c), which says that
''each House has approved the proposal contained in the report, either with or without modifications''.
That could not be clearer. If the hon. and learned Gentleman is saying that that needs to be clarified further, I do not know how we can do that.

Alistair Carmichael: I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for allowing a further intervention. What happens if one House modifies and the other does not? What procedure is followed thereafter?

Andy Burnham: I guess that the procedure would be the same as it is now; the elected House, with primacy, would prevail. I would not want there to be any procedure other than that. I will get back to the hon. Gentleman with regard to the detail of how the process would work on the Floor of the House, but from my point of view it is clear that the elected House will ultimately determine whether and how the order goes forward.
I direct the hon. and learned Member for Harborough to clause 43(1). On page 37, in line 8, ''modification'' is defined clearly as ''omission, addition or alteration''. I grant that the parliamentary word ''amendment'' is not used, but the substance of that definition is entirely the same—''addition or alteration'' is probably clearer than ''amendment''—and the effect is plain. 
To offer clarification to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, let me say it is my understanding that it is conceived that the system would operate in this way: if either House is not content with the proposal as modified 
''it must start the process again with a fresh report and proposal''.
That is explained in paragraph 52 of the explanatory notes to the Bill. 
I now wish to turn to the substance of the amendment.

Ben Wallace: As I am new to the House, I would like the Under-Secretary to clarify the relationship between modifying the report and how that affects the order.

Andy Burnham: With respect, I think that we have covered that ground. The order is drawn from the report, which could be agreed as amended. That is the basis for any order on which the House votes. It is the detail of the report laid by the Secretary of State that is debated. It is amendable and modifiable. Then the House can vote on that order. That is the process as we have outlined it. Only once the report has been approved can an order be made under the affirmative procedure, which would require approval in both Houses. The report has to be approved first, before we can move on to a consideration of the order.
Before I turn to the points raised by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, I want to stress again that this is, in many ways, new territory. The process that we are outlining has been conceived to reassure Opposition Members, who have consistently raised concerns throughout the discussion of the Bill. It is intended to ensure that when the moment comes to move to compulsion—Government Members are  clear that that is the point when the full benefits of the scheme will be unlocked—the House will be able fully to consider and amend any such proposal. That is the commitment that we have given. 
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland raised the issue of the compatibility of any such order with the Human Rights Act 1998. I understand the point that he is making, but his amendment would remove the power of a court to quash an order made under clause 6 on grounds of incompatibility with the Human Rights Act. I understand why he has tested us on that point, but that would be the effect. As with primary legislation, the most the court could do would be to interpret the order with regard to convention rights. It could declare the order incompatible, but it would not be able to annul it. 
The reason why the Government are confident about the Bill as it stands is that we are confident that it is fully compatible with the Human Rights Act. We are also confident, and ready to be tested on it, that any order made under the Bill will equally be fully compatible with convention rights and that the powers to make subordinate legislation will be exercised in a manner compatible with those rights. Labour Members see no need to limit the court's powers in relation to the Human Rights Act and clause 6, as the amendment would do. On that basis, I invite the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment, given that we stand ready to be held fully accountable under the Human Rights Act for both the primary and secondary measures that emanate from this Bill.

Alistair Carmichael: I have no problem with withdrawing the amendment. I said initially that it was a probing amendment, and I fully accept what the Under-Secretary says about its effect. We have had a fairly wide-ranging debate but, with your leave, Mr. Gale, I would like to pursue a couple of points on the basis that it is unlikely that we will have a stand part debate. I will take your guidance on that.

Roger Gale: The hon. Gentleman places me in a slightly difficult position because the amendment was fairly tightly drawn. The Minister chose to widen the debate, and I allowed him to do so. The debate was completely in order from that point of view. The hon. Gentleman is now winding up the debate. In effect, he is precluding any other Member from raising any other issue on the clause. Although I agree that there has been a fairly full discussion of the clause, I may decide to have a stand part debate so that I can throw that open to any other Member just in case there is something else that somebody else wishes to raise.

Alistair Carmichael: In that case, I shall seek to catch your eye in a few seconds' time, Mr. Gale. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. 
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Alistair Carmichael: I shall be brief because we have covered the clause, but a few of the Under-Secretary's comments struck me as worthy of further comment. 
When I first asked the Under-Secretary what would happen if one House approved the Bill in a modified form and the other House approved it in an unmodified form, or if they modified it in different ways, he said that he presumed that we would follow the procedure that currently pertains—namely that the will of the elected Chamber would prevail. He then said that, if that eventuality were to occur, a new report would have to be laid before Parliament. I see nothing in the Bill that suggests that that would be the procedure. I accept that it is said in the explanatory notes, but fortunately we are charged only with consideration of the Bill. The Bill will become the Act, and the explanatory notes will not. 
So many issues on this point remain unresolved that I see the Government creating problem after problem for themselves. Without wishing to be picky, I do not see that there is a procedure under the terms of Standing Orders as framed that would accommodate a procedure such as the one that the Under-Secretary described. He said that it was new territory. I see immense difficulties arising.

Edward Garnier: I am not sure whether, in providing that answer a moment ago, the Government applied their mind to the Parliament Act 1949. If the Lords refuse to accept a proposal contained in the report, whether modified or not, for more than the statutory time stipulated in the Parliament Act, will that Act bite or will we have to rehearse the procedure under clause 7 again and again?

Alistair Carmichael: I do not know the answer to the hon. and learned Gentleman's question. I suspect that nobody in the Room does. As the Under-Secretary said, the process is a novel one.
We seem to be tying ourselves in knots for no good reason. If what is wanted is a process that involves proper scrutiny of an important change to the Bill, it is always open to the Government to use the Standing Orders of the House as they exist and bring forward a piece of primary legislation. It seems to me that we are going all around the houses and risking all sorts of difficulties for no good reason. We have a perfectly adequate system. 
The Under-Secretary and other Ministers know that, although primary legislation normally takes a significant time, and properly so, it does not always do so. In the last Parliament, I was involved in a number of pieces of legislation relating to Northern Ireland in which all stages in the House of Commons—at least—were gone through in a day. Often, the whole thing was done, and something formed between ourselves and the other place, in two or three days. If there is any urgency, primary legislation need not take long. When there is urgency, it is generally accepted by all parts of the House that it is necessary for matters to proceed. 
We are dealing with this issue on a hot and muggy day. We will have the opportunity to return when the leaves are turning on the trees. I suggest that the Minister takes the benefit of that intervening period to consider whether more detail or specification is required on this clause. As things stand, I fear that  the Committee would be remiss to let it stand part of the Bill.

Edward Garnier: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, both for the reasons that he put forward and because, when we return to deal with the matter on Report, I would not lose much money if I put a bet down that we will have part of a day to discuss the remaining stages of the Bill. Perhaps we will have from 3.30 pm, subject to statements, until 9 pm. Then there will be an hour for Third Reading. That happened to the last night's Bill. I am not convinced that Parliament is allowing itself as a whole, let alone the Committee, proper scrutiny of this hugely complicated area of new legislation.
Neither Minister is entirely familiar with the territory. That is not their fault; they are new to the Department and this is a whole new area of legislation. However, not only is it new, but it will wholly alter the relationship between the individual and the state. We are advancing in a rather haphazard way. We accept in good faith the words of the Under-Secretary when he says, ''Oh well, we'll sort it out this way, or that way,'' but we are advancing in the absence of these statutory instruments, the code of practice and all the information that we, as dutiful legislators, need now in order to see whether this is a proper way forward. So I, too, am deeply sceptical about the good sense, or even the common sense, of allowing the clause to stand part of the Bill.

Tony McNulty: Happily, this clause stand part debate has been very useful. The points raised by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland are entirely fair. The short answer to his question on parliamentary procedure is that the Bill, and the passing of the Bill, will ensure that there is parliamentary procedure. However, he raised an interesting point.
As people will know, the genesis of the provisions is the fact that we regard compulsion to register as the end goal. We regard the step from voluntary to compulsory as a serious one. That is why we sought to put in the Bill a scrutiny process that would allow the House proper time to scrutinise these matters carefully, with due diligence. But what has been said raises interesting points. Not the least of those, as hon. Members will know, is the fact that the Parliament Act does not cover subordinate legislation, and so that route is out, as a safeguard. 
One interpretation—I give just one—is that the super-affirmative procedure could be seen as a rather crude algorithmic loop, in which something starts here, goes there, and, modified or otherwise, comes back. If it does not get to where it was headed, it starts again, with no apparent escape from that scrutiny loop. That is an entirely fair point. We put that down the last time the Bill was determined to be helpful to the House in terms of scrutiny. I assure the Committee that we shall take back and consider those comments, albeit with the clause intact, because that is how these things work. 
We will not lose sight of the points made about scrutiny, but equally we will not lose sight of the points  at least implied by hon. Members about the primacy of this House over the other place. It is the balance between those two matters that we really need to achieve. If it is not apparent to all Members that that balance has been achieved, or that there is practicability to this method of scrutiny, those are serious points that we need to take back and consider. However, because of the quaint way in which this place works, I would still rather like the Committee to confirm that, for now at least, the clause can stand part of the Bill, although we do take those concerns seriously, and we will respond to them in due course.

Edward Garnier: I do not know whether the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland wanted to respond to the Minister, but I thank the Minister for his offer.
I do not want to be accused of being unduly cynical, and I certainly do not wish to accuse the Minister or saying something that he did not mean, but it would be perfectly proper, and indeed our duty at this stage, to hold the whip hand, in so far as we have a Whip in our hand—

Tony McNulty: Your Whip is not here, is he?

Edward Garnier: I made that joke first.
In so far as we have any power at all, I think that it would be perfectly right for us to seek to divide the Committee to remind the House that we left this matter in a state of irresolution, if I can put it that way. If the Minister comes back on Report with a new version or a better explanation of how the Government think that they will go forward, for consideration in either this House or the other place, we will have done everybody a service, but he cannot at this stage dissuade me from seeking to divide the Committee.

Tony McNulty: I said that we needed to push the clause through, because that is how this place works, and in that context I fully understand why the Opposition will want to register opposition to the clause. I have no problem with that at all. As to the hon. and learned Gentleman's earlier comment, I would never use the term ''unduly'' in respect of him.

Edward Garnier: I cannot remember using the word ''unduly'' either in respect of myself or anybody else. I think the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland would like to say a few words.

Alistair Carmichael: I wish merely to place on record my appreciation of the tone and content of the Minister's comments. I remain of the view that we would be modifying an inferior system by modifying clause 7. My preference remains for amendment—or modification—by primary legislation. Accordingly, I would vote against the clause standing part of the Bill.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 10, Noes 5.

Question accordingly agreed to. 
Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8 - Issue etc. of ID cards

Patrick Mercer: I beg to move amendment No. 42, in page 7, line 7, after 'issued', insert 'free of charge'.

Roger Gale: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 169, in clause 12, page 11, line 17, at end add—
'(7) The Secretary of State shall make no charge for changes to the Register required by this section.'. 
No. 208, in clause 37, page 31, line 23, leave out 
'for the modification of entries'. 
No. 209, in page 31, line 25, leave out 'or modification'. 
No. 210, in page 31, line 24, after 'issue', insert 
'(but not re-issue or replacement).'. 
No. 211, in page 31, line 26, after 'issue', insert 
'(but not re-issue or replacement).'. 
No. 186, in page 31, line 39, at end insert 
'but no fee shall be imposed for a card issued in consequence of an order by the Secretary of State for compulsory registration.'.

Patrick Mercer: This clause is one of the most important in the Bill. It moves on from the identity register and the number of procedures for orders that are set out under the previous clauses. We are now talking about the thing itself: the card that in several years time, if the Government have their way, we will all end up owning, although, apparently we will not be forced to carry it nor will anybody be able to tell us to show that we have it.
I want to start by discussing the lead amendment, which I hope, despite the innocence of its words, will point up the severity of the cards and the cost of the whole ill-thought-through scheme. The amendment would alter clause 8(1), part of which reads: 
''For the purposes of this Act an ID card is a card which— 
(a) is issued to an individual by the Secretary of State, or as part of or together with a designated document''.
Our amendment would mean that paragraph (a) would read ''is issued free of charge to an individual by the Secretary of State, or as part of or together with a designated document''. I hope that it goes to the heart of the questions of whether we need the card at all; if we do, how the Government intend to fund it; and the public reaction both to the character of the card and to having to ante up the sum from their pockets to afford it in the first place. 
Before I dwell on the details of the card's cost, I want to talk about the opportunity cost. I have just heard an example, which I and others were considering at the weekend, of a wartime national registration identity card. It was a simple piece of cardboard on two sides. I imagine that its cost was almost nothing. Most people believe that this nation's only identity  card was carried during the war and suspended shortly after it. That is absolutely right. However, it is worth considering the fact that in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, a modification was introduced to the driving licence that placed it wholly at odds with those carried in the rest of the United Kingdom. In England, one's driving licence was a perfectly simple piece of green paper. There was no photograph or biometric, to use today's phrase, on the card. However, in Northern Ireland a driving licence with a photograph was introduced—in 1978, if memory serves me right. That sticks in my mind because at the time I was a serving soldier, having completed two or three tours in Northern Ireland, and I was returning for another tour. We were told that the driving licence had been introduced with a view not to securing the future of drivers or making it easier or less easy to procure a driving licence, but to having a useful knock-on effect for the purposes of controlling terrorists. 
I am sure that every Member knows the nature of Northern Ireland. It has a very dispersed population, among whom the ownership of cars per head is extremely high. On top of that, it has been identified that the use of cars was a sine qua non for the prosecution of terrorism on both sides of the political divide. Issuing an advanced driving licence made sense; it would be a very useful tool for the control of terrorism by the security forces. That licence was an extremely simple document compared with what is proposed today, although it was marginally more complex than the wartime version. I say again that it had a photograph on it. 
The opportunity cost of providing that driving licence was considerable. I cannot quote sums, but other security measures had to be forgone to include this driving licence. The effect was quite simple. On a rain-soaked lane in south Armagh at 3 o'clock in the morning, if a patrol was sent forward to intercept a car as it came speeding along a lane, the soldier or policeman inspecting the card, unless they had been specifically told to the contrary, would take a cursory glance at it and say, ''On your way. You've got a card; you must be a good guy. If you're a good guy, I will detain you no longer.'' 
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough used the phrase ''flash and go'' the other day. I had not thought of the issue in those terms, but that licence involved precisely that. The danger of introducing an identity card, particularly for security and counter-terrorism, is that it does not become a proof of identity, but a pass. Once someone possesses such a card, particularly a complex card that has been through several biometrics iterations, it becomes, for the security worker—soldier, policeman or whoever—a pass into the inner sanctum. 
We all carry similar passes to let us into the House of Commons. That is a slightly different matter because our faces are generally recognised by the excellent security staff here. None the less, it stands to reason that unless the holder is carefully looked at, the possession of a card—particularly a complex one—starts to work to the benefit of the terrorist or criminal.

Roger Gale: Order. The hon. Gentleman is drawing on his experience in Northern Ireland, and I  well understand why. However, I have to have mind to the order of the Committee. I have looked carefully at clause 8 and it seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is beginning to go into Second Reading territory.
I do not wish to curtail debate and am perfectly happy to have a stand part debate now, rather than at the end of the clause, if that suits everybody. However, I cannot allow another Second Reading debate.

Patrick Mercer: I shall take what you say to heart, Mr. Gale. If we have a stand part debate, I might expand on the point. I am grateful for your guidance.
I return to the opportunity cost of the card. If we charge for it, what other security measures shall we miss? I shall expand on that later, but the point of tabling the amendment is to find out what the overall cost of the card will be to the individual. We have heard all sorts of estimates. During the last iteration of the Bill, the Government estimated that it would cost somewhere in the region of £100. I shall not labour the point, but the great LSE report ''The Identity Project'' suggested that the cost would be considerably higher. Can the Government tell us what the overall cost of the scheme will be, not only to the individual but to the nation—the cost not only of the card but of the readers and the other technical equipment necessary to make the card work? 
The point of the amendment is simple. By saying that the card should be issued free of charge, we are probing the Government and asking them to explain how they intend to allocate the cost. Is it their intention to charge everybody the same price, whatever that may be? I do not wish to make a point about the cost itself—whether it is £100, as the Government first suggested, or whether it will be £300 as suggested by others. [Interruption.] I hear the Minister intervening from a sedentary position. If it is going to be in the region of £100 or slightly less—

Tony McNulty: For accuracy, £100 was never mentioned; the figure was £93. It was always clear that it would be a unit cost and that 70 per cent. of the cost would be for implementing the second generation of biometric passports. The Government never gave a figure of £100.

Patrick Mercer: I hope that the Minister will forgive me, but he has not used the word ''canard'' for some time and I was expecting him to do so. No doubt, flights of canards will be coming over in due course. However, £93 and £100 are fairly similar sums. I have no doubt that he give a fuller explanation in due course.
I hope that the Government will be kind enough to explain whether those individuals in our constituencies who are in receipt of benefit are likely to have to pay the same price as those not in receipt of benefit. If so, how will the cost be allocated among those in a better position to pay? Are we, or are we not, going to have a sliding scale of costs? I suspect that that might be so. The energy with which the Minister intervened a few moments suggests that the Government probably have an awful lot of explaining to do on that point. 
I would be most grateful if the Government would consider amendment No. 42, in which we suggest that cards should be issued free to every individual rather than people having to bear the cost of the scheme, an idea with which I disagree at all levels.

Alistair Carmichael: I want to speak briefly in support of the amendment. If, through the prescribed document procedure, we move to what, if nothing else, will be a system with a substantial element of compulsion, it seems to me that the element that introduces compulsion—namely, the difference between the identity card and the passport—should be free of charge. It seems to me that there is some slightly lazy thinking on the subject and that, because we charge for passports and driving licences and other documents that might be prescribable at a later date, it might be thought that an element of public money or taxation is not involved. Equally, one might point out that any number of other identity card documents are issued free of charge. For instance, it is now the Government's practice to issue national insurance cards on people's 16th birthday. That was not the practice when I was 16, but I think it is now. National health service cards are issued, and in Northern Ireland cards are issued for electoral registration purposes. There is no charge exigible for any of those cards, and that is quite right, but it rather undermines the Government's apparent assumption that a charge should be made for cards under the Bill.
The crux of one of the amendments is that, where registration is compulsory, the charge should be waived. That is eminently sensible and fair, and if the Government want to introduce the scheme without popular resistance, that is the sort of approach that they must take. The hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West will recall the hay that the Labour party in Scotland made over the introduction of the poll tax. That was because a compulsory charge was levied on the basis of a registration. If we go down the same road with the Bill, I can imagine those who were previously in the Labour party and are now in the Scottish Socialist party rubbing their hands with glee at the opportunity that will be presented to them, when those who are subject to civil penalties for non-compliance discover that a procedure exists that culminates in a warrant sale for non-payment of a civil penalty. The point is essentially one of politics rather than law, but the Minister would do well to heed it.

John Robertson: The hon. Gentleman must stop trying to compare the Bill with the poll tax. The money involved in the poinding in Scotland was thousands of pounds. We are not talking about thousands of pounds now. We have already heard that 80 per cent. of people carry passports, and this measure is linked to passports. People carry driving licences. People have to pay for those no matter who they are, what work they do, or whether they are in employment. If they want a passport they must pay for it. The hon. Gentleman's argument is about how much people should pay, and that is what we should debate, but the measure bears no resemblance to the poll tax. I do not see people going out in the streets because of payment for ID cards. They may do it  because they do not like them, but that is a different argument. If that is the argument that the hon. Gentleman wants, I am happy to have it, but using the Bill as a mask for the poll tax and trying to compare the poll tax and ID cards does not merit consideration.

Alistair Carmichael: No matter how hard I try, there are people in life whom one just cannot help. The hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West seems to be one of them. I look forward to hearing him advancing that argument when Tommy Sheridan leads protests in the streets of his constituency as the first warrant sales for the imposition of civil penalties take place. I would pay good money to buy a ticket for that.

John Robertson: The hon. Gentleman is making wagers now. I will make a wager that there will not be any warrant sales over ID cards. I am sorry, but that is something that is not likely to happen.

Alistair Carmichael: Time will tell, but the hon. Gentleman supports a Bill that involves civil penalties recoverable by civil diligence. In Scotland, notwithstanding the amendments that have been made by the Scottish Executive, that still involves poinding and warrant sale. The hon. Gentleman can explain that to his constituents when they ask him, but that is what he is supporting. He will stand or fall on that basis, and I shall watch with interest as he does so. I offer that in the spirit of helpfulness, because the Government may, at some stage, encounter popular resistance to the measure. If they do, they can at least point to the fact that they have sought to be fair in the way in which they have levied charges, which will give them some political protection. If they do not wish to avail themselves of the political protection that I offer them out of the goodness of my heart, they will be answerable for the consequences.

David Drew: As has been said, this is the kernel of the debate. I have no problem with the concept of ID cards. In fact, I should like the Government to have the courage of their convictions and say that they will be compulsory. That is the best and most honest way to proceed. There seems to be a discrepancy between public consent when the idea is put forward, and public consent when the idea is put forward and the cost is attached to it. That is what this clause is about. On the cost, when the Under-Secretary responds on the amendments, would he clarify whether we are talking about the cost of a biometric passport being a way in to the ID card? I can accept that. We pay for passports now, and it would be exceedingly generous of the Government to issue every member of the population capable of carrying one with a free passport, so I do not expect us suddenly to provide a passport gratis.
However, I will have a problem if we are talking about paying for an ID card in addition to that passport. In my simplistic view, the passport is a good way of providing ID. It is a way in which we can make a realistic charge for the use of a facility. Under the next clause, we will be discussing whether an ID card might not be voluntary for some members of the community, so I wish to be clear about the  Government's intention in relation to this clause. We need to talk realistically about the true cost of the card, even if we do not have all the details. If we want popular consent, we will have to give the card free on the back of the passport, or we will have to provide it without there being a real increase in cost. Otherwise, there will be no popular consent, and the ID card will fail. 
I hope that the Minister will respond now, notwithstanding the fact that we might get the opportunity to debate the matter again on clause stand part. Without putting all the details into the Bill, the Government must be clear what they intend to charge, if they intend to make a charge at all. I think that the passport is the way in—we will pay for that; but I would argue that we should not pay any more. However, I will listen to what the Government have to say.

Ben Wallace: I want to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). It is important, if we want to get popular support, not to charge individuals for the card. I have to disagree with the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West about the cause célèbre, or the usual suspects in the Scottish Parliament, who are waiting for just such an issue.
I agree that the same sums are not involved, but there is, in a sense, a stronger ideology. I had the fortune, or misfortune, of serving with Tommy Sheridan, Dennis Canavan and some of the other characters in the Scottish Parliament. I even voted with Tommy Sheridan several times. 
The Scottish Socialist party and the Green party in Scotland are queuing up to make identity cards a cause célèbre. This is the sort of thing that will attract support for their parties, which has been failing in some areas. I warn the Government that high prices and the disappearance of public support will be a very good catalyst for protest, which can end up in warrant and poinding sales, without clear guidance from the beginning on who is liable for the charge. Will there be exemptions?

John Robertson: Barring the hon. Gentleman's own political principles, which he obviously swallowed when he voted with Tommy Sheridan, perhaps he could say whether he agrees with the point that I was trying to make to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, which is that the argument is not about the cost but about the ID card itself, people's principles, and their arguments for and against it. As I pointed out to the hon. Gentleman, the cost will not be the reason why people go out on to the streets, as was suggested, to protest against ID cards.

Ben Wallace: The cost might not be the spark, but it will certainly be part of the process of protest. People will say, ''I'm not paying for it. I'm not having it.'' It will be the catalyst that results in people refusing to have an ID card and to pay for it. It will be the catalyst when someone is asked to send in their cheque and their application. That is the argument that will arise.
 The Government have a duty to indicate at least the basis of the cost of the card. What do they  anticipate the cost will be? The Minister was very sure that it was £93, not £100. Will he give the Committee a guarantee that it will stay at £93, given that he was so certain that it was £7 less than the figure that my hon. Friend the Member for Newark quoted? 
I doubt that the Minister can give us that figure, because I do not believe that the Government really know the roll-out cost—to use that phrase—of the scheme. We are on very rocky ground until we are given that detail, especially when there is no concession in the charging scheme. 
One reason why I am opposed to the ID scheme is that when costs spiral, the money is taken from other Departments. That has happened under both Governments. First, it will be taken from the Home Office budget and thus from prisons, from Security Service capabilities, from the policing budget and from everything that is funded by the Home Office budget. 
If the Chancellor of the Exchequer is happy to submit to this Committee or on Third Reading an undertaking to underwrite any overspend from the Treasury, that might alleviate some of our fears. My general fear, however, is that other strings in the counter-terrorism bow, the policing bow or the security bow will be taken away as costs spiral. At the moment, we have no reason to believe that they will not spiral, because we have seen little evidence or detail of the costings from the Government.

Kali Mountford: In an earlier debate, I had a slight crossing of swords, albeit in a kind and gentle way, with the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace). I make the point that I made then: the hon. Gentleman talks about the Treasury, as if we can somehow dip into the Treasury's deep pockets and draw out whatever we want at any point, as if it was not taxpayers' money. Of course, there is only ever one source of money in this country, and it comes from the people who earn it and who pay over some of it in taxation or charges. We simply deceive ourselves if we pretend that there is some other way. That is a point that I made on Second Reading, which I should like to clarify now, as we are debating fees and charges.

Roger Gale: Order. As this is not a Second Reading debate, I would rule that out of order.

Kali Mountford: Most certainly, Mr. Gale. I simply wish to remind members of the Committee of some points that I made on Second Reading, which I would like to return to for clarification. As the amendments deal with fees and charges, I hope that this is an appropriate time—with your permission, Mr. Gale—to ask for clarification.
Some Members say that the card, registration or whatever they wish to call it is free and deny that the money has to be found somewhere, but there are implications. Obviously, some of the people about whom I am most concerned would benefit from a free card.

Ben Wallace: I was trying to make the point that if the money comes not from the Home Office but from the Treasury, Government priorities other than Home Office priorities may suffer. I am not saying that there  is a free lunch but that there would be different priorities.

Kali Mountford: Obviously, that is the nature of Government and of setting priorities. Resources are brought into the Government through taxation, which is one way, or fees and charges, which are another. It is reasonable for the Government, out of their set of priorities, to say that an available option is to take money from the Treasury and deny other Departments funds that they might wish to spend in other ways. Undoubtedly, that is true.
A charge would be a reasonable option. Some of my constituents who discussed the matter with a Home Office Minister had in mind charges that they thought would be reasonable. They already pay for passports, which have never been free, and for various services that at previous times they thought should be free. Now that they have accepted charges, they can understand their relevance and the point of making them. In fact, they would prefer a charge to an increase on taxation of, say, a penny, to pluck a figure from the air. They prefer charges because they know specifically what they are for and what benefit they get from them. 
My concern when we come to compulsion is for the 20 per cent. of people who do not already apply for passports. There may be some difficulties for them. I seek some reassurance from the Minister that, when we come to decisions about charges and about compulsion, we will pay due attention to those who are on low incomes or on benefits, or who may have other disadvantages in life that make applying for ID card registration or paying for it difficult. Whether in the course of the Bill or secondary legislation, I hope that at some point we pay careful attention to ensure that appropriate discounts are available to those people who have such difficulties.

Edward Garnier: I am sure that we all hope that that will be the case, and that work is being done to anticipate the costs. Sadly, from the written answers that I have received from Departments other than the Home Office, none of the work has been done. I asked the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Transport, the Department of Health, the Department of Trade and Industry and—surprise, surprise—the Treasury, and learned that they have done no preparatory work at all.
I suspect that the other Departments are waiting for this proposal to go belly-up, and that their political heads will leave it to the Home Office to pick up the pieces. They will say, ''It was nothing to do with me. It was a Home Office scheme, and it is the fault of that Department if it does not work or if it does not come in at an attractive cost. The Home Office can row that boat by itself.'' There is concern about the cost, and my hon. Friend the Member for Newark was exactly on point when he raised the issue in the amendments. 
The Government had a briefing for Members of Parliament. For those who were not able to attend, there was a supply of paper slides. On page 21, there is a section called ''Costs—current best estimates''. One box says: 
''£93—current best estimate for the unit cost of the combined biometric passport and identity card package valid for 10 years''.
That may be of interest to the hon. Member for Stroud. 
''Levels of fees including concessions and costs to non-passport holders are not yet settled''.
That will be of interest to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford). It goes on: 
''Unit cost for issue of ID cards to foreign nationals not yet finalised''.
That should be of interest to us all. It continues: 
''£584m—estimated annual cost by 2008/09 of issuing biometric passports and ID cards (incorporates existing and planned costs of running UK Passport Service)''.
As I understand it, Mr. Chris Pounder, who gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee during the last Parliament, gave evidence that the United Kingdom Passport Service's business plan for the decade 2006 to 2016 estimated a revenue during that period of £4 billion. As I understand it, although the Minister may be able to correct me, the UKPS is supposed to be a self-financing organisation. 
The Government slide says: 
''Around 70 per cent. of those costs''—
presumably meaning the £584 million— 
''would be required in any event to deliver the issue of biometric passports (to incorporate initially a facial biometric and then fingerprint biometrics''.
That is the information that we have from the Government up until today. It may be that we will get more from Ministers in due course. 
If the Government, by which I mean not just the Home Office but the other Departments of State to which I have referred, have not done much work—or at least not much work that they are prepared to share with the public—they should not criticise those who have done their best to do the work to inform the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has, quite properly, referred on a number of occasions to the valuable work done by the team at the London School of Economics. They have spent some time looking carefully at the subject and have reached a number of conclusions. I make no claims of originality; I am relying heavily on the findings of the LSE report. 
The report tells us—my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre has some practical experience of this—that 
''Any system that supports critical security functions must be robust and resilient to malicious attacks.''
It suggests that because of the size and complexity of the system that we are required to bring in, it will necessarily incur 
''higher implementation and operational costs than has been estimated.''
It goes on to suggest: 
''The proposed use of the system for a variety of purposes, and access to it from a large number of private and public sector organisations will require unprecedented attention to security.''
The security internal to the system alone has huge cost implications that do not seem to have been made public by the Government.

David Drew: To return to the point that I was making, does the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that we need some knowledge of the additional cost of biometric passports before we can get some clarity about the costs of ID cards? It is potentially a lose-lose situation if we consider how they are going to be funded. Of course, biometric passports could cost the same as existing passports, but I suspect that they will not.

Edward Garnier: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He extends the point made by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland during the course of his speech.
Let me give the Committee some of the subject headings identified by the LSE that need to be costed so that we can discover the likely overall cost of the identity card and whether the Government can, as we would like them to do, provide it for free. A range of cost for issuing identity cards over a 10-year period was identified by the LSE of between £814 million and £1,216 million with a median cost of just more than £1.015 billion. It may help the hon. Member for Stroud if I refer to passports. Based on passport service figures, the lowest figure is £3,936 million ranging to £4,065 million with a median of £3,936 million so the median is nearly £4 billion. 
The cost for readers for the public sector as specified under the Bill is of particular significance. No Departments have worked out what they will have to find in their internal budgets to supply readers at post offices and other places where the public will gain access to public services. However, readers for the public sector will cost £291 million at the lowest level, and £317 million at the highest. The national identity register, which we dealt with under clause 1, will cost £1,559 million at the lowest level ranging to £2.9 billion at the highest. Managing the national identity register will cost from £2,261 million to £5,341 million. Staff costs over a 10-year period may range from £1.7 billion to £5.3 billion and miscellaneous costs will be between £22 million and £117 million. 
I have absolutely no idea whether those predictions are accurate and reliable, but all the Government say is that they are rubbish or back-of-the-envelope calculations and not to be trusted. I do not know whether that is a proper way to argue such a serious issue; the Home Secretary simply used rude words as though that approach would deal with it. I am not sure that that is a sensible way to go about matters. If things are wrong with the figures and the assessments, why do the Government not deal with the issue on its merits? Simply saying, ''Rubbish,'' demonstrates not only a poverty of language, but a poverty of thinking. 
The Government will need to get their head round the fact that there will be private sector costs relating to the verification of individuals, which, as the LSE said, may account for a sum equal to or greater than the headline cost figure suggested by the Government. The LSE report states that private sector staff will have to be trained to use biometric systems and, in larger organisations, staff must be on hand at all times to verify customers and new employees. New facilities  may have to be built to accommodate applicants who feel sensitive about having their biometrics taken in public areas. All such matters relate to amendment No. 42, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark, on whether the identity card should be provided free. I use the expression ''free'' in the literal sense, bearing it in mind, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre and the hon. Member for Colne Valley said, that there will be a cost to the Treasury to implement such a system, whether an actual or some form of subsidised cost. 
I do not wish to hide for a moment behind the public expenditure implications of providing a free identity card, but we must have a sensible, grown-up debate about what the clause will let us in for. Having had that debate, we must be mature enough to tell the public that, if they want identity cards to come in, they must be prepared do that out of their own earnings, in additional taxation or by paying for them by writing out a cheque for the additional cost over the amount that the Government are willing to subsidise. The hon. Member for Stroud is right—the public should know the cost of the scheme. Both the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Newark have done a service to the public in this debate. 
The Government have also to bear in mind the additional cost of the registration of people's biometrics on the system. That will probably have to be repeated at frequent intervals for most of us, who are not close to death's door. If the system is to be of any value—given that the shape of one's eyes and one's hands, as well as one's iris and other aspects of the biometrics, develops and changes over a lifetime, perhaps between 16 and 65, 75 or 85—one will have to reregister every five years or so after the initial registration at 16. That will involve some cost, but a cost to whom? It is not fair for the Government to advance the scheme on the basis that they will work it out in due course and to say that it does not matter now because, ''Believe us, we will get it all sorted out.''

Kali Mountford: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Edward Garnier: I was going to finish, but of course I shall give way.

Kali Mountford: The hon. and learned Gentleman talks about the frequency with which biometrics need to be taken. Is that not part of the problem in understanding the costs? On average, 10 years is required between applications, not five. If biometrics are collected and cards issued half as many times as he suggests, the figures he quotes will reduce significantly.

Edward Garnier: Of course, if the hon. Lady is right, and she has evidence upon which to persuade me that the interval will be 10 years rather than five, that will have a bearing on the figures. Where does she get her information from? On what basis is she saying that as the hon. Member for Colne Valley—not as a scientist, a statistician or a biometric expert? How does she expect to persuade me simply by asserting that 10 years is the likely repeat period? I am looking to her for some backing for her assertion, but I do not seem to be getting it.

Andy Burnham: The hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about a very specific matter. He is no expert on biometrics, but I hope he accepts that the National Physical Laboratory is. In February 2003, it published a feasibility study on the use of biometrics, from which I quote:
''In the case of facial recognition it would seem advisable to update the templates at least every 10 years. Fingerprints and iris should be considerably more stable''.

Edward Garnier: That is fine. It is another contribution to the debate, but it is a pity that we did not have it earlier, or at a time when the Government could have responded to the LSE report. Instead of saying, ''Rubbish,'' why did the Home Secretary not say, ''Actually, that is not quite correct,'' or, ''It may not be correct because,'' and then do what the Under-Secretary has just done—cite the material he has cited? I cannot argue with that.
The Under-Secretary is right that I do not understand biometrics, but I do know that people need to be told. Why should we go back to our constituencies at the weekend, having been in a debate such as this, no better informed? Our constituents have a right to know what is being done in their names. They have a right to know how much they are to pay for this treat. If he and his colleagues cannot tell us, he should put his hand up and say, ''We do not know,'' or, ''I am advised that,'' but not just, ''Rubbish.''

Tobias Ellwood: The Under-Secretary has made an interesting point to do with facial imaging. The image needs to be updated only every 10 years, but I understand that the success rate is only 69 per cent. I shall stand corrected if that is not the case, but that is the figure I was given in respect of the Government's trials. Even if it will be necessary to have the images changed only every 10 years, does not the poor success rate merit more scrutiny? It might rule out the measure.

Edward Garnier: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The Under-Secretary is listening carefully, so I am sure that he will be able to deal with that point in detail. I cannot do so.
Let me finish with this point. The LSE claims: 
''As people age, their biometrics change and become less reliable. As a consequence, these people are more likely to face problems with the use of the identity card system and may require more frequent updates of their biometric information stored on the system. Approximately 17 per cent. of the population are aged over 65 and will fall into this growing class, as will such people as the visually handicapped and those with mental impairment. The implications for reliability, cost and trust in the proposed identity system are significant.''
That section of the report concludes: 
''One possible solution to these problems is the endemic use of multiple biometrics. However, this feature would add significantly to the cost of the system.''
I shall leave my comments there. 
My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has initiated a highly significant debate on the cost of the ID card system. I trust that we have kept within the neat confines of his proposed amendment and the subsection to which it relates.

Tobias Ellwood: This has been a helpful debate, as it addresses the core of the issue. The hon. Member for  Stroud put his finger on it when he talked about the public's change in attitude to ID cards. That only goes to prove that debates in this Committee and the main Chamber are in a good cause.
The nation is becoming more educated on what ID cards are all about, and as that happens the public are clearly becoming more sceptical as the concept of ID cards is overtaken by the reality of what would happen if they were introduced. It is therefore healthy that we should pose these questions. The estimated cost of each card—£93 or £100 or whatever it will up be—is a fundamental factor that is changing people's views as to whether they will accept the scheme and whether they will think we are getting value for money. 
Obviously, the police back the scheme, but what would they say if we turned the question around and asked them, ''If you had £5 billion to spend on something to help you, would you spend it on ID cards or something else?'' That has not been put to them. 
If we consider the cost of the NHS database, which went from £6.2 billion to over £20 billion, we see that it is important that we know how much the scheme will cost. An ID card costs €15 in Belgium, €30 in Holland, and £20 in Sweden. Those costs are low compared to what is being offered here, even if one gets a passport rolled into the price. 
We have yet to hear any definitive costs for ID cards and chips, staff and administrative support, reading machines, input centres, completing the biometrics research and pilot projects, or the database. Several hon. Members have pointed out the fact that most databases that the Government have tried to launch have gone excessively over budget. Nothing in the Bill or that Ministers have said indicates that this register will be any different. We need clarification on those issues, because the absence of costings makes us question the worthiness of the Bill and is changing the public's mind on whether they want the scheme.

Andy Burnham: This has been a wide-ranging debate. I must draw Committee members' attention to the fact that clause 8 is principally about the practicalities of issuing ID cards and that clause 37 deals specifically with fees in respect of functions carried out under the legislation.

Roger Gale: Order. Before we go down that road, I should say that I have been listening carefully to this debate, and it is correct that clause 37 deals with charges, but the entire discussion has been in order in terms of the amendment. We shall come on to discuss the substance of the clause itself and other matters arising from it when we debate other groups of amendments.

Andy Burnham: Thank you, Mr. Gale. I was not suggesting that it was out of order. I was simply saying that this is a crucial issue. The Committee will have another opportunity to examine fees and charges, and it is appropriate that we should do so. As the comments of the hon. Member for Orkney and  Shetland and others suggest, the issue goes to heart of whether there will be popular consent or popular resistance. That is understood. How the fee regime that underpins the legislation is judged by people will be crucial. We believe that there is a good basis of consent for the principle of having a national identity card scheme, as long as people are satisfied that the fee is proportionate, that the benefits are realistic and that the technology can deliver the job. There is a series of ''ifs'' there, but we believe that the scheme will deliver.
I was pleased that the hon. Member for Newark referred to the card in Northern Ireland, and I think I heard him say that it was a useful tool in combating terrorism.

Patrick Mercer: I have drawn my remarks on this matter to a close on your instructions, Mr. Gale. If I get another chance to speak in the clause stand part debate, I will expose the fact that that was an abject failure in Northern Ireland.

Andy Burnham: Forgive me. I thought that the hon. Gentleman had said the opposite. I referred to those comments because we have to make a cost-benefit judgment in our consideration of the ID card. We have to gauge what the benefits of any such card would be as against the cost. We can debate that later, but it is important that people consider at all times what the benefits would be.
Amendment No. 42 would remove the Government's ability to charge for any ID cards issued by the Secretary of State, whether as a stand-alone card or as part of a package together with a designated document. That would mean that our proposals to cover costs from charging and fees would fall, and the only source of funding for the scheme would be from general taxation. 
I am interested to know whether Opposition Members find that proposal attractive or whether they would prefer to have no scheme at all. The key point is that they need to understand the basis of the scheme. The hon. Members for Lancaster and Wyre and for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) referred to what the money could pay for with regard to other parts of the Home Office budget. I think that this was the question that was asked: what sections of the Home Office budget would have to be sacrificed to pay for the card? It must be understood that the scheme is based on fees. Therefore, it is based on a different premise from a scheme that is founded on general taxation.

Ben Wallace: On Second Reading, the Government alluded to a cap. Therefore, if the costs rise and the cap is in place, those costs cannot be met out of the fees, and they will have to be met either out of the departmental budget or the Treasury Budget.

Andy Burnham: Obviously, it depends where the cap is set. The hon. Gentleman can express an opinion on that when we address the issue of the cap. However, the principle of the scheme is still based on its costs being met through fees, and it being linked to other designated documents, as we have discussed. It is not right to speculate on huge black holes in the Home Office budget, or to advance the argument of the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East, which is that the  police could take all this money and spend it on entirely different things. That is not the basis of the scheme. There is not an amount of money that has been parcelled up for this scheme; the scheme is based on income derived from fees from private and public users who will benefit from the high-quality verification that the scheme will offer. I am happy to make it clear that that is the basis on which the scheme is progressing.

Tobias Ellwood: I am grateful that I am allowed to contribute on this matter. I return to the essence of the Bill. It is designed to tackle fraud, illegal immigration, crime and terrorism. If those things are at the top of what the Government are trying to achieve, a good question is whether we are getting value for the money that we are spending. Are we able to achieve those things? If we do not know the final cost, how can that judgment be made? I am sorry to go on Mr. Gale, I appreciate that this is an intervention and not a speech.

Roger Gale: I will tell the hon. Gentleman when he must stop; he is quite close.

Tobias Ellwood: I will be brief. If we know what that cap is, we can say whether this money can be spent elsewhere.

Andy Burnham: The Opposition Members could make their points if the scheme were based on general taxation or were, as their amendment proposes, free of charge. However, it is not. So, their points do not follow. The scheme is not based on a card that is free of charge or that is funded from general taxation.
The hon. Gentleman is right to tease out the point in that there will be benefits to the public sector, or to the state. We believe that there will also be benefits to the individual: not just convenience, but the ability to have a higher quality of identity proof. We believe that that will benefit individual citizens and that they will want to take advantage of it, given that people have genuine concerns about others misappropriating their bank details, address and other things, and about others applying for documents falsely without their consent. The benefits will also fall to the private sector. There is no doubt about that. The benefits will fall in different ways, and it is right that people should make a proportionate contribution for those benefits. A judgment has to be made about where the cap should fall. 
 I understand the hon. Gentleman's points. I am not dismissing them, but I wanted him to understand that the scheme is principally based on fees and is not funded through general taxation.

Edward Garnier: The Under-Secretary says that the system is principally based on fees. He then divides up the three beneficiaries: the state; the individual; and the private sector. What estimate has he made of the amounts that will come in to underscore the system from the private sector, the state and the individual?

Andy Burnham: I hope that I can help the hon. and learned Gentleman. A document was laid in the Library of the House on the day of Second Reading. I am unsure whether he has had the opportunity to read it. It is a fairly detailed analysis of the benefits of  the scheme and their breakdown. It gives some figures about how we believe the benefits would fall. I do not have chapter and verse to hand, so I recommend that he examines it. It provides the detail that I think he seeks.
I have heard Opposition Members on a number of occasions refer to a plastic poll tax. That is part of the claim that the proposal might bring people out on to the streets of Scotland, to which the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred. It is perhaps a measure of today's Conservative party that it feels relaxed enough to talk about the poll tax in that way. The other point is that it is an entirely useless analogy. That was a recurrent charge and the scale of the fee was nothing like what is being proposed in this Bill. 
 I want to take the point head on. Opposition Members made a number of assumptions. They talked about the sums of £100 or £93 for a card. The Government have not put those forward at any stage. There has been a lazy shorthand among some people. They have just extrapolated in relation to the cost of the card. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the £93 relates to the cost of enrolling people on the register and issuing them with a biometric passport and a biometric identity card.

Patrick Mercer: When the Under-Secretary says that the cost of the passport and the card amounts to about £93, he makes it sound marginally more attractive. If everything that we have been told about cost overruns on Government-sponsored projects means that it will cost three, four or five times that amount, however, does that not negate the argument entirely? Whatever the cost of the passport, be it £300 or whatever the total budget is, the card will still be fantastically expensive and deeply unattractive.

Andy Burnham: I must point the hon. Gentleman to the fact that the UK Passport Service is already preparing itself to introduce the first and second generations of biometric passport. The figures used have not been plucked out of the air; they are based on the changes that the UK Passport Service must make to deliver the biometric passport. We believe that that is necessary regardless of what the House decides on identity cards. That infrastructure needs to be in place so that the citizens of this country can continue to travel with the convenience that they expect. The figures for the running costs of the scheme have a good grounding in the business planning of the UK Passport Service.

David Borrow: My hon. Friend needs to realise that if the scheme is to be acceptable, it needs to be introduced on the basis that the bulk of the costs are costs that would be incurred in any event to introduce the new passport scheme. If 80 per cent. of citizens have a passport, and will need to obtain one of the new passports and have to pay for it, that could be acceptable. It would not be acceptable to ask the remaining 20 per cent. of people who do not have a passport to pay £100 for an ID card. Some time over the next few months, we must find out what charges will fall on the 20 per cent. who do not have a passport and do not want one but who will need, in due course, to get an ID card.

Andy Burnham: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend's point, which goes to the heart of points raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud and for Colne Valley. People want reassurance. I referred to clause 37 because it provides a wide range of powers to set fees; it allows the payment of fees in instalments, for instance. It also makes it clear that there will be concessions or discounts for those on low incomes. I do not know whether the hon. and learned Member for Harborough finds that funny as well. Not everyone would need to pay the full cost of the card. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow). It is a fair point, and the Government have said that we are listening to it.
The point that I was making in response to the hon. Member for Newark is that part of the cost will be absorbed by the cost of the biometric passport. It is reasonable to accept that a higher-value, more secure passport will cost more. The current fee for a passport is £42. The fee is £95.50 for the renewal of a 48-page passport using the same-day, over-the-counter premium service. The cost of the passport is already significant and will probably have to rise to go towards the next-generation passport that countries are requiring British citizens to use when travelling. Given that arrangements are being put in place to deliver the second-generation biometric passport, it is sensible to go further and obtain the benefits of an identity card for everyone in the country. The Bill would allow us to waive fees altogether should we so choose—obviously, this relates to the amendment—just as we do now for passport fees for people born on or before 2 September 1929.

Ben Wallace: I happen to have at hand the impact assessment for the Identity Cards Bill. I think that it is the one to which the Minister referred—the one that was placed in the Library—and there is a series of paragraphs on costs. The Minister has talked about the cost to the individual, but I would be grateful if he referred to the other costs alluded to in the impact assessment—for example, the cost to the employer. There is a whole paragraph on how much it will cost people and individuals.
I want to push the Minister further on the cap that he talked about earlier. What is the cap? He says that we can talk about the cap afterwards, but it is important, because where one sets the cap is obviously where one starts to incur costs in the Department and so on.

Andy Burnham: The cap is an extremely important point and I shall deal with it now, because it was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made a commitment on Second Reading that takes on board concerns expressed by my hon. Friends. The commitment was that we will come back before the Bill leaves the House with more detailed proposals on the charging regime. Those proposals will deal not only with the likely cost, but with the possibility of reduced fees for those on low incomes, as well as the possibility of a maximum charge for the ID card—the so-called cap. I believe that that will provide the reassurance that Labour Members and the public are looking for with respect to the cost of an identity card. 
I hope that the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre will accept that the commitment has been given, that work is ongoing and that the commitment will be honoured. Before the Bill leaves this House, there will be a fuller statement on the likely cap and where it will fall. Of course, if one does the maths—

Roger Gale: Order. There is a Division on the Floor of the House. The Committee will be suspended until 8.15 pm, or until 8.30 pm if there is second Division.
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. 
On resuming—

Roger Gale: Hon. Members will have noticed that the Bill team is currently locked out of the building. If it becomes apparent that the team's absence will make life difficult or impossible, we might have to draw stumps. Failing that, we can continue until we are allowed out of the building.

Andy Burnham: Perhaps we should continue until the Minister's frailties are cruelly exposed by the lack of support. At that point I shall look to you pleadingly for assistance, Mr. Gale.
I was speaking about the commitment that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary gave on Second Reading to introduce more detailed proposals on a charging regime before the Bill leaves this House. To reiterate, I hope that the assurances that my hon. Friends the Members for Colne Valley and for Stroud have sought will be answered in more detail at that point. We have said that there will be concessions or discounts for people on low incomes and I mentioned that there is provision in the Bill for payment in instalments. When the level of the cap is outlined, I hope that my hon. Friends' constituents and mine will feel that they can support the identity card scheme. 
Bearing in mind that the cost of a biometric passport is expected to be about £65 and that the figure given in the regulatory impact assessment is £93, people will make their own calculations of what the ID card element adds to the cost of a biometric passport.

David Drew: I shall not ask complicated questions, because we might get into deep water, but it would be helpful for us if the figures were disaggregated as much as possible, because there is a danger that people will consider the global sum. I would want to know what a biometric passport cost and what part of it one was paying for, not the overall figure. We need that clarity on those numbers, even if they are in a spread.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend makes a valid point. It is partly in response to understandable pressure for more clarity about cost that the £93 figure has been given. One could argue that, in giving that figure, we have laid ourselves open to misrepresentation. People have used the £93 figure for an ID card as shorthand; it has been referred to in newspapers and repeated in this Committee today. That is not the proposal on the table, however. In bowing to the pressure to give more information at an early stage about cost, we face the potential for  confusion. I understand entirely his point about disaggregating the costs, and when the time comes, the Home Secretary will give more detail.
Although one can disaggregate the figures, the enrolment process is the same for the passport and for the ID card, so there is a cost that is common to both. Were other documents to be designated for the purposes of the Bill, they would use the verification system that the ID cards register will put in place, which would of course benefit that system. I understand my hon. Friend's point. One feature of our proposed scheme is that it brings together those high-value identity documents, with the database at the bottom. That is why there is conflation in terms of a package, although as I said, I understand entirely the point that he makes.

David Drew: We are not discussing numbers, but will my hon. Friend clarify what is meant by high-value documents? Are we talking about driving licences, access to benefits and to the national health service and so on? That is the real question outside Parliament.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend is right. We have already made it clear that the passport would be designated, and he will agree that it is the highest standard of identity document. People are increasingly asked to use it as proof of identity, not to travel but to open bank accounts and the like. A driving licence is also of that ilk, and we know that those documents have been procured to support multiple identities. People have been running more than one document in certain instances recently.
A document such as a Criminal Records Bureau check requires a high value of identification. In research, people have told the Home Office that one value of an identity card scheme is that it provides a high standard of identity verification for people in positions of trust in society. They regard the fact that people working with children or vulnerable adults will have undergone identity verification to a higher standard as a core benefit of an identity card scheme. 
I have in mind exactly those documents, but I take my hon. Friend's point that when the time comes, we shall need to clarify where the costs lie, where the concessions are and who will be liable to pay what, so that people can understand the proposed scheme. I hope that he will be satisfied about that point when the Home Secretary fulfils his commitment. 
Amendment No. 186 seeks to amend the clause 37 power by excluding from the fee regime cards issued under compulsion. The amendment was tabled by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. The principle that the user, and therefore the person who benefits from an ID card, should be liable to pay is the same whether they have registered under the compulsory powers or voluntarily chosen to obtain an ID card. Hon. Members may claim, rightly in my view, that it would be unfair to charge people who are compelled to register for an ID card, but it would be unfair not to charge them, because people who acquire their card voluntarily will have to pay. For consistency, it is right that the fee regime should apply however people acquire their card. 
During the contributions from Opposition Members, a comparison was drawn regarding other European countries and their identity card fee regimes. Some of the figures quoted, such as €20 or £20, represent a reasonable fee for a card. I cannot remember whether it was Sweden to which the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East referred. I do not know whether it has the biometric identity card. I do not believe that it does, but a significant sum is involved. Several EU countries charge for ID cards, including countries such as Germany, where it is compulsory to hold one. France has issued cards to its citizens for decades, but I understand that it plans to charge a fee for the new French biometric identity card when it is introduced. 
Amendment No. 169 would ensure that no charges could be levied for modifications to the register. Amendments Nos. 208 to 211 would also preclude the levy of charges for the reissue or replacement of ID cards. We have touched on this point before, but it is worth making it clear again that it is currently the Government's intention that, where details are changed on the register but there is no need to reissue an ID card, there should be no charge to the individual. Where the circumstances have changed completely, perhaps with a change of name on marriage, however, and there is a requirement to issue a new card, we should rightly retain the ability to levy a fee. 
I should like to pick up on some other points made by Opposition Members in what was a good-quality debate that went to the heart of many of the issues that we are discussing. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough said that he had tabled parliamentary questions to the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Treasury and—I think—the Department of Health. He said that they had done no preparatory work on how an identity card would be used to access services or on the benefits that could it bring to the delivery of those services. The Treasury, the DWP the Department for Transport and the Department of Health are all on the Home Office's principal users' group for the ID card scheme. The Treasury is on the programme board. 
Paragraphs 72 and 73 of the regulatory impact assessment set out the current state of planning in other Departments. Further information about the benefits of the ID card scheme are set out in the supplementary briefing paper published on 28 June, which I have mentioned. It is not true to say that there is no engagement from other Departments. I do not know the precise terms of the question that the hon. and learned Gentleman tabled, but I can assure him that there is full engagement from other Departments on this issue.

Edward Garnier: I shall not read out the answers now, but I perhaps I shall do so at some suitable stage, as I have some of them here. I have just been out to the Letter Board and found three more answers, two of them from the Minister.

Andy Burnham: I am sure that the answers are correct. The hon. and learned Gentleman can refresh my memory on the questions after the Committee, but he will have to accept it from me that the Home Office  is working extremely closely with other Departments. The whole premise of the scheme that is being introduced is that it will have wide-ranging potential benefits for the delivery of services in the public sector. He will know that the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has more than a passing interest in the success or otherwise of the Bill. I can assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that the Secretary of State remains extremely keen to see it on the statute book and also to ensure that it bears down on benefit fraud. It is not true to say that there is no engagement from other Departments.
 The hon. and learned Gentleman went on to pray in aid in quite some detail the report of the London School of Economics about the calculations made on costs and the impact on the cost to the individual. My hon. Friend the Minister of State described the £300 figure as nonsense. It is nonsense. The hon. and learned Gentleman asked Ministers to deal with the research on its merits and explain in a methodical and detailed way why we believe that the assumptions that it made are wrong. He is right to ask for that explanation, but it is what we have sought to provide since the LSE published its research. I will now take him through some of the arguments. 
As the hon. and learned Gentleman will know from my earlier intervention, the LSE assumed that the biometrics would have to be refreshed after five years—a core part of the assumption on which it based its costings. I made it clear to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud that the enrolment process accounts for a considerable part of the cost. We have always made it clear that it is at the point at which the biometrics are captured that we need to have a high quality, controlled process to ensure that the integrity of the database is high. 
There is no doubt that refreshing that process every five years for every citizen would lead to a significant extra cost, because of the staff time and so on. However, I again refer members of the Committee to the National Physical Laboratory report that was published in February 2003, which I believe is available in the Library of the House but which is certainly available on the identity cards website. It clearly states that, for iris and fingerprint biometrics, a minimum lifespan of 10 years can be expected. 
I take the points that were made about the ageing process—about how people are physical characteristics, including perhaps their iris, can change—but the report is based on a detailed analysis of biometric systems. Other research from the United States backs up that conclusion about biometrics. We do not believe that it is necessary to repeat the enrolment process every five years.

Edward Garnier: I have the LSE's full report with me. I accept that it is a big, fat document, but it deserves proper scrutiny before the Government decide that it is rubbish. Over the summer recess the Government will consider how best to conduct the remaining stages of the Bill. I suggest that the Home Office and the two  Ministers involved read the report and come back with a response, as they would if it were a Select Committee report. That would be the intelligent way to deal with the report, rather than for the Home Secretary to appear on the radio or say on Second Reading that it is rubbish.
From what I have heard from the Under-Secretary, I judge that he is keen to engage in a sensible debate about the document, rather than simply to rely on words such as ''rubbish''. I encourage him to persuade his colleagues, both political and from the civil service, to consider the report and come back with an essay in response to it.

Andy Burnham: When my hon. Friend the Minister is in his dry swimming pool in the south of France this summer, we will have a lot of reading and thinking to do. I assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that I have read the report. If he will allow me, I will spend a moment on the issue.
In the weeks running up to the publication of the report, at which time we had not seen the research, a series of newspaper articles claimed that an identity card would cost £300. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that public support for identity cards started to fall. I could not have told my constituents in Leigh, ''ID cards are the best thing since sliced bread and you will have to pay £300 for them'', because they would have told me to shove it. 
We knew, based on the research that we had conducted in the Department and that the ID cards team had done over a long period, that that figure was not credible. As a result of its efforts to roll out biometric passports, the UK passport service knows that £300 for an identity card is simply not a credible figure. The hon. and learned Gentleman will understand that, in the world in which we operate, we cannot allow such statements to be made when we have not been given access to the research on which they are based. It was right to respond to that claim because it bore no relation to the scheme that we are outlining. It is also right, as the hon. and learned Gentleman asked, that we should now go into detail in rebutting it. We were being asked to respond to the £300 figure, and we were within our rights to rebut it.

Edward Garnier: The Government did not rebut it, they simply abused it. They just said ''rubbish''. I am not sure whether the Government had gone in for peer review when they said that the LSE report was ''rubbish''. However, it would be one thing to have gone in for a peer review in which the Government's research was presented to the public, or to the LSE or any other dispassionate academic or expert reviewer, so that there was a mutual cross-fire of reviewing. If I am wrong about that, the Minister will tell me. However, what the Government did was not a sensible way to conduct a public debate about a hugely important issue such as this.
It is plain silly for a senior Minister of the Crown simply to say ''rubbish'' when he hears something contrary to the case that he wants to run. Let us try to move away from the ''rubbish'' type of response and see whether we can get the Government to look at this issue during the summer and put it side by side with  their own research, which we have yet to see in any detail. Then we, the public and the commentators could work out where the balance of evidence lies and make a cost-benefit analysis. I use the word ''cost'' not only in the sense of money, but in the social and political sense and in the sense of every other aspect of cost that cannot be measured in pounds, shillings and pence. 
If the Minister engaged in that exercise, he would carry many more members of the public with him; he might even persuade Members of opposition parties to think a little more highly of the Government's case on identity cards.

Andy Burnham: I shall not delay the Committee much longer on this point, although it is important, given that the LSE report has been the backdrop to much of the debate in the run-up to Second Reading and since. I was trying to give the hon. and learned Gentleman an honest assessment of our position: we were faced with newspaper headlines reading ''£300 for an identity card''.
That would cause concern to both the hon. and learned Gentleman's constituents and mine. It was right that we put out a strong rebuttal when faced with those allegations. They deserved a strong rebuttal because the figure was so outlandish. I use that strong language because that figure bears no relation to the scheme that we are developing. I am afraid that in the leaking and the briefing of that figure, some of the right for that figure to be treated with any credibility was forfeited. 
On Second Reading and since the report was shared with us, we have gone through the LSE assessments and given some detail, as I have tried to do in my response to the hon. and learned Gentleman, on why the £300 figure is a nonsense. I mentioned to him that the biometrics do not need to be refreshed as the report claims. That assumption leads to the projection of a massive extra cost. 
Another assumption of the LSE report was that the plastic of the ID card would need to be replaced twice or even three times over the 10-year period—that the individual card would need to be replaced twice, if not three times. 
We are absolutely confident that a 10-year lifespan for this kind of card is feasible. Hong Kong's identity card scheme is based on the premise of a 10-year lifespan and the Communications Electronic Security Group has designed an electronic security scheme that will remain robust for 10 years against people trying to create forged cards. Wild assumptions were made that were not borne out by our research.

Edward Garnier: Part of what the Minister says is welcome, and part is deeply embarrassing. I cannot accept that a Minister who used to work in No. 10 as a special adviser or a policy adviser—indeed, he introduced himself to the Committee as a former spin doctor—was concerned about an academic group briefing the press on this subject, especially as there have been all sorts of leaks from this Government and, no doubt, from under his pen before he became a Member of Parliament. The Government not only  resorted to denigrating the LSE's report as rubbish, but made personal attacks on people who—

Andy Burnham: No.

Edward Garnier: This is what the Government do, and the public know that they do it. We want to move to a higher plane of debate than Ministers who, through their spin doctors, be they Members of Parliament or not, attack the academic integrity of individuals who write reports—

Roger Gale: Order. I think that it is fair to say that both Front Benchers have had a fair run for their money. I have been fairly tolerant of the direction that the debate has taken, because the issues are clearly very important and it is not the Chairman's job to stifle debate, but we are now moving too far into the realms of party-political dispute. Perhaps we should return to discussion of the amendments.

Andy Burnham: Thank you, Mr. Gale. Allegations have been made. I said that the debate had been wide ranging, and that hon. Members raised many points, to which I am trying to respond. On the LSE report, I take your strictures on board but, in closing, I will just say that, although I did work in No. 10, and introduced myself as a spin doctor to the Committee, the academic report in question put itself into a domain where things are based on newspaper reports.

Edward Garnier: Rise above it.

Andy Burnham: We can rise above it, but we are serious about this scheme and we are not allowing unfounded scare stories to run in the press, purporting to be from a serious academic report. That is an important point. Bearing in mind your strictures, Mr. Gale, I will move on, and bring my remarks on the clause to a close.
A final point was made about the changing nature of biometrics. I touched on that slightly when I mentioned that the National Physical Laboratory report, which says that they can last for 10 years. I think that it was the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East who made the point that people's biometrics change. He referred to the UK Passport Service's biometric trial, and pointed out that there was not a very high success rate in the trial involving facial recognition technology. That was not a trial of the technology—an arcane point, but true. It was a trial of the process of enrolment. In enrolling people, it did not test how the technology performed. The trial was simply to see how people found the experience of enrolling their biometrics. By the way, the vast majority found it a positive experience. 
There was a very high registration rate across the board of well over 90 per cent., even though the trial was not conceived to measure that. When we move into a different phase, the technology will probably be tested, and I hope that when we get the result of that trial the hon. and learned Gentleman will have more reassurance on that point. 
The general point is that the systems perform well. They are in use all around the world. Biometric systems are being used today, in this country. Members have already referred to the Project Iris scheme. This is not pie in the sky technology; it is  actually being used on a large scale today, in the United States and other countries. It can do the job that we claim it can—and, crucially, at a cost that the public will find acceptable. That is really the crux of the amendments before us. We do not believe that it is right to fund this scheme through general taxation. We do not believe that it would be right to make a differential charge, depending on whether people register voluntarily or under a power of compulsion. Nor do we believe that people amending their record on the register should be charged, although the issuing of a new card will require a charge, just as the issuing of a new driving licence or passport does. That is the right basis on which to proceed. 
I have picked up on the concerns of my hon. Friends, who said that consent and acceptance of the scheme will ultimately be determined by the cost to the public, the end user. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that he will come back to the House on that. 
With that assurance, and given my other comments, I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.

Ben Wallace: I want to move on slightly. I can understand that the Minister should want to defend his position on the LSE report, saying that he had no sight of the data or the evidence before the headline figures were published and that he therefore needed to give a robust response. He might therefore understand why the Opposition and Members across the House, who are looking for details on the headline initiatives, are equally robust in our criticism. Until we see the figures and detail behind them, he should not expect us to be welcoming.
Four paragraphs of the regulatory impact assessment of 25 May deal with the costs. Paragraph 16 deals with the cost of the new agency that will combine the functions of the Passport Service and the process of administration, but no figure is given. As the hon. Member for Stroud said, there is no indication of the separate costs of ID cards and passports. Paragraph 39 deals with the cost to the employer of verification systems and so on, but again no figure is given. Paragraph 50 is about the extra counter-terrorist costs and the cost of readers for the police and immigration service. Again, it gives no figures. The final paragraph deals with the cost of investment for other public service deliverers. All those factors are dealt with in the cost-benefit analysis, but no figures are given. The heading of ''cost'' should give a clue, but it does not. 
The Under-Secretary said that biometrics are not new. They are not; fingerprints go back to Dr. Crippen, about 150 or 160 years ago. It is interesting to note that fingerprints are the only tried and tested store of biometrics that works. They are long-established and are trusted as a measure of identification. The Under-Secretary said that the United States immigration and homeland security service takes biometric information when people enter the country, and it is predominantly fingerprints. I  may be mistaken, but I believe that the Pentagon biometrics store is DNA; it is successful but it is not included in the Bill. 
The costs are mainly to do with iris and facial recognition. That system is not completely mature in the marketplace, which is why we have doubts about how large the costs may be. That is why we question and probe; we are asking more detailed questions about the headline figures in order that we can trust the figure of £93 or at least have separate figures for the card versus passports. When we come to try to sell the idea to our constituents, we can say that the figure is capped, and I can tell the local police force that they will not lose precious resources as a result of the cap. The cost-benefit analysis figures are important. 
Finally, I note from the Minister of State's briefing of 12 July that the UKPS personal information project report will be published on Thursday. I hope that he will be able to make it available before the Committee convenes so that we can discuss it, otherwise it will have to be left until afterwards to debate. It is important information, and I ask that the Minister will allow us to debate it.

Patrick Mercer: When I opened this debate, I said that the amendments went to the heart of the Bill. The length of the Under-Secretary's reply, for which I am most grateful—as ever, it was detailed and articulate—proves that I was right. We heard some outstanding contributions. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough and my gallant colleague my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre—and the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland all made good points, but most illuminating of all were the contributions made by Labour Members. The hon. Member for Stroud voiced some clear reservations about the cost of the card and its implications—what it will do and what can be achieved. To paraphrase the Under-Secretary, he said that the card has to demonstrate that the fee is proportionate, that the benefits are tangible and that the technology can deliver.
I reiterate the comments of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough about the LSE report. I doubt the Government's probity in the way in which the project, into which went a huge amount of work, was rejected. The report not only makes its points clearly, but, most constructively of all, provides an alternative at the end. [Interruption.] I hear the Minister scoffing—or perhaps he is choking on a canard. He and the other Minister are clearly discussing their holiday in France, but may we ask them to work and tell us what is wrong with that blueprint. Might not it be an alternative scheme?

Andy Burnham: I stress that I have not dismissed the LSE report, although I question some of the circumstances in which it was made public and the involvement of organisations that have clear agendas on ID cards. Leaving that aside, I accept that there are valid observations in that report, which we will consider in detail. I should have told the hon. and learned Member for Harborough that we will respond to it in a considered way in due course. 
The LSE blueprint would make every general practitioner in the land a semi-permanent ID card official, almost. A scheme conceived on that basis, in which GPs spend half their time signing ID card verifications would have major costs for the public sector.

Roger Gale: Order. Given the ministerial undertaking offered to the Committee, the time has come for me to say that this debate is not about the LSE report, although I appreciate that matters arising from it underpin some of the debate. I always tell Committees, ''You can have the debate once,'' and the Committee chose to have it now rather than on clause 37. That is in order, but we have to conclude the debate on the series of amendments before the Committee, and, if necessary, vote on them. We must now move to that point.

Patrick Mercer: Thank you, Mr. Gale. As always, I am grateful for your guidance. I will mention the LSE report no more, other than to thank the Under-Secretary for his reply about it and for the thoroughly constructive way in which he has approached it; I wish that that had always been the case with others.
The Under-Secretary suggests that there is a degree of maturity in the passport scheme in that costs within reasonable bands can be assessed. My hon. and learned Friend then asked how the rest of the costs were being assessed. The Secretary of State for the Home Department was asked what estimate he had made of the cost of equipping police premises in each police area in England and Wales, and police officers, with ID card readers. The Under-Secretary himself replied: 
''The Home Office has been working to identify areas where the Identity cards Scheme could provide business benefits. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary placed in the Library a paper containing the latest estimates of benefits of the Identity Cards Scheme. The cost of equipping premises will depend on the nature of the use of the Identity Cards Scheme and the type of identity check(s) necessary to deliver the business benefits. In some cases, benefits could be realised without the use of card readers and the cost of installing any readers needs to be considered alongside future plans to refresh or upgrade IT systems.''
Other replies, for instance from the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, are almost identical and suggest that the costs are simply nowhere near being understood. The Under-Secretary was careful to avoid saying that, but I think that he is suggesting—my maths is extraordinarily basic; I failed maths O-level many times—that the cost of a card is about £30. He did not say that in as many words, but that is what his reply to the hon. Member for Stroud, who has quite rightly pushed the point, amounted to. If the Government are saying that the package of the passport and the card will be about £98 and the maturing cost of the passport is understood to be about £65, that leaves about £30. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I do not think that there was any reply from the Under-Secretary about the cost of a card to a person who did not need or want a passport. Surely, at this stage of the scheme, we ought to understand those things. 
I return to what I was saying earlier about the opportunity cost of the whole scheme. Several ministerial points were made. First, there was one  about the fee being proportionate, but if the fee remains at about the £100 mark, I will eat my hat. Secondly, a point was made about the benefits being tangible, but the Under-Secretary has failed to convince me completely on that. Thirdly, there is no indication whatever that the technology can deliver a card that will produce results at the approximate cost that he has estimated. Lastly, there is the whole point about whether the card will be paid for out of receipts or by taxation. I may be being desperately simplistic, but if the Home Secretary has introduced a cap on the costs of the scheme, does that not suggest that whatever cannot be recovered in receipts must be made up for in taxation if the scheme is to work? I suggest that, as a result of that, the fee must be disproportionate. 
I find it hard to understand how the Under-Secretary can substantiate the comment that individuals will want a generally higher level of identity proof and will be willing to pay for it. I doubt that very much. I fear that he has failed to convince me and I must therefore press for a Division. 
Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 8.

Question accordingly negatived.

Alistair Carmichael: I beg to move amendment No. 153, in clause 8, page 7, line 12, after 'recording', insert 'prescribed'.

Roger Gale: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 154, in clause 8, page 7, line 14, after 'carrying', insert 'prescribed'.

Alistair Carmichael: Both amendments relate to subsection (2). They would insert the word ''prescribed'' in paragraphs (a) and (b) so that they would read: ''recording prescribed registrable facts'' and ''carrying prescribed data enabling the card to be used for facilitating the making of applications for information'' and so on.
The Committee will be aware that in clause 43, the general interpretation clause, 
'' 'prescribed' means prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State or determined in accordance with such regulations by the prescribed person''.
The amendment is fairly narrow in compass, and it is a probing amendment. It would require the Government to present in clear terms the information that will be recorded among the registrable facts on identity cards or that will be available to people seeking access to it. I suggest that it is the latter, rather than the former, that is of greater significance. That seems a small safeguard  that we can put in place to contribute to the transparency of the system.

Tony McNulty: I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing the amendment to our attention, not because of what he is trying to do—as I shall explain, it is not necessary—but because of a second point that I shall outline. The amendment is unnecessary and it does not narrow the provision or add any safeguard, as subsection (3) states:
 ''An ID card issued to an individual— 
(a) must record only the prescribed information''.
That achieves what I think the hon. Gentleman intends. As to the data, clause 14(2) elaborates—I apologise for my relatively complex explanation—on precisely that point: 
''The only information about an individual that may be provided to a person under this section'',
after which follow references to paragraphs 1, 3 or 4 of schedule 1. The definition is very narrow already and as the word ''prescribed'' is used in clause 8(3), it is unnecessary for it to be included twice in subsection (2). 
Having reflected on the general wording of subsection (2), however, I wonder whether it may be too widely drawn in the sense that it could encompass elements other than those that we want to encompass, so we want to examine that issue in more detail. Perhaps for the wrong reasons—I mean this in the nicest possible way—the hon. Gentleman has drawn to my attention an aspect of the Bill that we may need to narrow down: the two definitions of ''things'' in subsection (2). I am enormously grateful to him for alerting me to that. 
As to the point about the word ''prescribed'', it is covered by subsection (3) and subsequent cross-references. I therefore ask the hon. Gentleman to seek leave to withdraw the amendment.

Alistair Carmichael: If the Bill already provides for what the amendment seeks to do, I do not see the harm in specifying it. However, as the Minister seems to suggest that I am rather smarter than I realise, I am more than happy not to press the amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Nick Palmer: I beg to move amendment No. 192, in clause 8, page 7, line 19, after 'information', insert
'unless the individual has consented in writing to the recording of additional information'. 
This is a probing amendment. I am anxious not to take too much time away from the Opposition's efforts to find loopholes in the Bill, but I should like to make a couple of points. The ancestry of the amendment is the debate that I had with the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland on clause 3(2), in which he sought to persuade the Committee that it should not be permissible for the register to contain voluntary data—data that the individual might want to be recorded on it, such as next of kin or blood group. The Committee decided that it should be possible for the register to contain such voluntary data. 
It is possible that at some time in the future individuals might want to enter into voluntary arrangements with banks, other financial institutions or other private businesses, by which they would store information on the card by agreement with the firm. Those possibilities are ruled out by the Bill, if I understand it correctly. My amendment would make it possible for individuals voluntarily to seek to store on the card additional information beyond that prescribed by the Bill. I do not anticipate that there would be an immediate stampede of people seeking to do so, but the proposal is that we would make it possible without a change in primary legislation should individuals wish to do so in future.

Patrick Mercer: The amendment strikes me as a sensible addition to the Bill. I take it that the hon. Gentleman is intimating that details about things such as organ donors, blood groups and allergies might be entered on to the identity card because such information could be useful to medical authorities and next of kin. If such provision were in the Bill, it would be helpful. I do not imagine that it would be enormously costly, given that, as we have just discussed, the card will be extremely expensive anyway. I would have thought that the amendment made a great deal of sense, and I am happy to support it.

Ben Wallace: Will the Minister clarify what the Bill means by the ''prescribed information'' that may be contained on the card? There is an ongoing debate when it comes to smart cards and the like about whether the card holds a certain amount of data beyond the encryption data required—for example, some of the French medical smart cards carry X-rays—or whether the database will hold all the information and the card will just hold the encryption for accessing it. That is a difference.
The Bill refers to ''prescribed information''. Does that allow an opening whereby, should the Minister change the design of the register, he could say that the registrable facts can go on the card instead of being held on a database? It is a point about technology, and forgive me, Mr. Gale, if it sounds too technical and boring. None the less, it is an issue that might define the development of the system in future.

Tobias Ellwood: I hope hon. Members will bear with me while I work through the documents. We did not get an opportunity to discuss clause 5(5)(d) because of the curtailment of the debate. It refers to other information that ''may be required'' by the Secretary of State that has to go on to the register.
 Bearing that in mind, let us examine paragraph 7(a) of schedule 1, which relates to 
''the information provided in connection with every application''.
Such information might also need to be put on the register. Paragraph 8(c) of schedule 1 refers to 
''questions and answers to be used for identifying a person seeking to make such an application''.
That information can also go on the register. Wordings such as ''may be required'' and ''questions and answers'' that ''may'' be used are open ended. They do not limit what can go on the register and  indeed on to the ID card itself. Therefore, I endorse the amendment. 
I ask the Minister to qualify the measures that I mentioned. It might be my misunderstanding, but as I read it, there is a loophole that allows a substantial amount of information to be included should people wish the provisions to be used in that manner. Perhaps he does not intend that they should be read in that way. As I see it, however, any questions or answers posed during the interview process could be placed on the register and therefore on the ID card. I might have got it wrong, but it seems like a loophole.

Roger Gale: The Minister will no doubt wish to reply and he has heard what has been said. I caution, however, that we cannot go back and redebate clauses that have already been debated.

Andy Burnham: I have no wish to do that. I have a genuine wish to address the point put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe. He and I have a longstanding interest in the subject. The welcome aspect of his amendment is that he seeks to enhance the value of the scheme to the individual. That is an entirely welcome objective. He is right that people would want to take advantage of that facility if it can be made available. His amendment relates to additional voluntary information, other than the prescribed information set down in secondary legislation, which could be stored on the card itself if the individual consented in writing at the enrolment stage.
I can reassure my hon. Friend that I share his general objectives in that area, and that clause 8(3)(a) does not preclude the inclusion on the card of voluntary information. The regulations could prescribe that voluntary information could be included on request, so the provision does not preclude the inclusion of those data.

Nick Palmer: Is my hon. Friend saying that part of the ''prescribed information'' could be such voluntary information as the individual might wish to have?

Andy Burnham: That is exactly what I am saying, and I hope that that will reassure my hon. Friend. The information that people could volunteer, under the provisions of clause 3(2), is exactly the kind of information that the regulations could allow to be recorded on the card. There is a distinction to be drawn in respect of inclusion on the card in terms of writing on the face of the card; it is more likely that he is referring to information held on the chip. I should say that no final decisions have yet been made as to whether that is practical and achievable. Picking up on the point made by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre, people could have a range of different requests about what they would like to be held on the card, and it might, of course, be technically difficult to accede to all those requests.

John Robertson: Will my hon. Friend consider what my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe has been saying? I cite the example of my wife, who is allergic to penicillin. If the card said ''allergic to penicillin'', and if she were knocked down or anything like that, God forbid, the person who saw the card would not need a reader to see that she was allergic to penicillin.  Anybody who knows anything about hospitals knows that the first thing that medics do is to give a massive dose of antibiotics, and it is usually penicillin.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend makes a very valuable point. That is exactly the kind of thing that would make people willing to pay the costs. If we can produce a scheme that gives direct benefits to members of the public and gives them more peace of mind when family members are out—I refer to the exact scenario that he describes about his wife; indeed, I can think of other people with different allergies—such applications will be extremely useful to individuals. They would be a good selling point for the card. I inject a note of caution, as it is too early to say with absolute certainty what information could held on the card and how easily it could be accessed, but I take his point entirely that that could be a good reason to recommend the scheme to the public.

Ben Wallace: Perhaps I can offer a note of helpful caution to the Minister. We have just had the debate on cost and functions. He has been in discussions with APACS, the Association for Payment Clearing Services—the banking security system, the chip and PIN system. That system, effectively, a verification system of identity; one goes to the shop and conducts the transaction. That system is cheaper for verification readers than it would be for the readers that would take the information off the card. Can the Minister take that issue on board? If one switches from one function to the other, there will be a massive increase in cost. I therefore ask him to clarify—he need not necessarily do so now, but he should do so before the Government commit to the scheme—whether the information will be kept on the front of the card or on a database. There are different readers in each case, so the costs will be different.

Andy Burnham: There are three ways in which the information could be held. It could be printed on the card, it could be held on a chip that could be accessed when the chip was inserted into a reader—if my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West has in mind health information, it would make sense for the health service to have the ability to read information relating to blood group, allergies and so on—and there is information held on the register. On the point raised by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East, the issues are to do with the register, not the card.
There is a debate to be had. I am not giving a commitment on what facility will be offered to people to register information that they wish to place on the card voluntarily. Should we offer such a facility, people will find it another attraction in an excellent scheme. I hope that that offers encouragement to my hon. Friends before I respond to the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre. He made the point earlier and we should be clear on this: it is a decision for the private sector as to how much it wants to engage with the scheme. 
Whatever business companies are in, they will have to do their own cost-benefit analyses with regard to their investment in equipment to read cards. It is not for us to decide whether or how much they should  invest. That is for them to consider. If they believe that the costs stack up and they can specify a higher grade of reader, that is what they will do. If they decide—in the case of pubs, for example—that there will be no benefit to their businesses from such readers, and that they will rely on straightforward checks of the cards, it will be up to each one to decide how much to engage in the system. I expect that people involved in financial services will want a higher standard of identity verification, but that decision will be for them alone.

Edward Garnier: If the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West is to be reassured about his wife's safety in the event that she is knocked over in the street or has some other accident, the details will have to be encrypted in the chip. If that is the case, the ambulance or the paramedic will have to have a reader, otherwise it will not be possible to read the encryption.
I think the hon. Gentleman wants something printed on the face of the card—perhaps, for example, ''Mrs. Robertson: allergic to penicillin.'' Surely, the simplest and cheapest way to achieve exactly what he wants, which is done by many people already, is for her to have a bracelet or necklace with a little badge on it giving details of her allergy. That is a cheap, simple and quick way to achieve what Mrs. Robertson wants.

Andy Burnham: The option is entirely voluntary; it is not something that people will be compelled to take up, so it will be up to them.
Clause 8(3)(a) does not preclude that information from being held on the card, but it presents technical issues about what we will allow people to include. I can understand that most people do not want to wear a dog tag. I would not want to do so, but I would want other people to have access to a telephone number in an emergency or another situation in which I would want somebody to contact my next of kin. I would find that reassuring, and I would be glad if members of my family had the same thing. However, that is a personal preference; it is yet to be determined whether it can be achieved. I hope that most people agree that it would be a good thing. 
Let me turn to the point about the usefulness of what is printed on the card in relation to the International Civil Aviation Organisation. We want the ID card to comply with its regulations so that it can be a valid travel document within the European Union. That is one of the aims of the scheme. The information on and design of the card will be subject to secondary legislation because it will have to comply with ICAO requirements to be valid for travel around Europe. The individual will benefit further if the card can be used as a passport for European travel. All the issues must be weighed. 
This is an interesting debate, because we are getting into the realm of what will be of benefit to the individual and why it will be in their interest to shell out the cost of the card, whatever it is. I will not give a figure. When weighed in the balance, such direct  reasons might lead them to decide that the card is worth having. 
With those reassurances, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe accepts that the Government are seriously considering his aims and want to help if they can. The questions are ones of practicality and achievability. I hope he can withdraw the amendment.

Nick Palmer: The purpose of the amendment is to test whether such a proposal has been ruled out. I am delighted not only that we are not ruling it out, but that there is some cross-party support for it. With that in mind, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Alistair Carmichael: I beg to move amendment No. 155, in clause 8, page 7, line 21, leave out from ''period'' to end of line 22.
The amendment would remove subsection (3)(d)—that is, the provision that an ID card issued to an individual 
''remains the property of the person issuing it.''
Again, this is a probing amendment. Its import is that it is rubbing salt into the wound to say that someone is compelled to pay money for the privilege of registering to obtain a card, but then does not own it. That is the essence of the amendment. I do not see why property cannot pass in an ID card. 
On a different, slightly more philosophical level, the provision is obnoxious. It is not just the ID card that is at stake, but what it stands for—information about the citizen and the citizen's identity. The Government do not own my identity; I own it. If I am to have an ID card, I would rather own it. 
Another aspect to consider is from criminal law. I may choose to use the ID card to scrape frost off my car, which very occasionally is necessary in the temperate climes of Orkney on a Monday morning when I need to get to the airport. That may be the most useful thing I would ever use it for. If, in so doing, I were to damage it, I would be guilty of vandalism or malicious mischief, as it would not be my property. If it were, I could use it as I wanted and would have to replace it at my own cost if I damaged it. I do not understand why that should not be the case.

Edward Garnier: The hon. Gentleman has exposed a more interesting point than he perhaps realises. We concerned not only about the ownership of the piece of plastic, which he may or may not damage if he has it on his person. Of course, if we accept the Government's blandishments, carrying the card will be entirely voluntary. He might leave it in his office in London, go home to his constituency for the weekend and not have it with him, but none of that will matter, as it will belong to the Government.
However, there is something more important than the ownership of the piece of card. I accept the hon. Gentleman's implication that if the card is damaged or lost, he will have to apply for a new one and will have all the inconvenience and cost that go with that.

John Robertson: The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said that he will not need a card, other than to scrape his car with it. He will not have to have the ID card on his person at any time whatever, so he can lose it for ever and nobody will know or care. The approach of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough is that the card is compulsory, that it must be carried at all times and that the hon. Gentleman must have one.

Edward Garnier: I shall not deal with the hon. Gentleman's point, as I am not sure that it is helpful to the debate.
What is important is the intellectual property in the information that the card represents. That was touched on to some extent by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, who said that he and nobody else owns his identity. However, we are talking about more than identity. Tens of pieces of information are there only because they relate to him in one form or another, although I accept that together they build up a means by which the Government will be able to claim to have identified him as the person described on the card, given each individual's peculiarities. 
We need to be sure about who owns the information and who can sell it. We know that the Government are prepared to sell to the private sector the right to verify by means of the register and the identity card system. We know too that the Government are keen on updating and improving the information on the register, because the system will not work if it is not kept up to date and modern. There is a problem with whether that should be done every 10 or every five years, but the principle is exactly the same in either case. 
That precious relationship between the individual and the state is being changed in yet another way, as the amendment has revealed. The amendment can therefore not be brushed aside as having only anecdotal value. Again, it goes to the heart of what the Government are about and what they want to do to the relationship between the state and the individual. I commend the amendment for all it stands for.

Ben Wallace: I add to the point that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough have made. Biometrics represent a new form of data file. This is not a new concept, but it belongs to me—these are my biometrics. The Government cannot do anything else with them and if I go to the trouble of paying to give them, I am effectively paying so that the Government can store them so as to verify my identity.
The Government have no reason not to give the biometrics back to me so that I can use them to access services. For them to hold the biometrics exclusively for themselves or perhaps to sell them on to someone else—for access or verification, which has been mentioned—is fundamentally wrong. No one else can use my biometrics. They cannot pretend to be someone else, I hope—that is the whole point. 
What is to prevent the Government from giving us back a copy of our biometrics, so that individuals can do with them what they will outside the duties of the  state? It is important to recognise that when we go beyond just a photograph, the data become biometric and part of me, which, as my hon. and learned Friend said, changes the role of the state in its relationship to the individual. I do not see why the state cannot give me back my biometrics, so that I can use them as I please.

Tony McNulty: I would not dismiss the amendment as trivial by any means. If I was being less than generous, I would perhaps say that some non-Liberal Democrat comments were verging on the trivial, but I am a generous man so I will not.
I do not accept that the amendment or the clause fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state, but that is a debate for another time. Nor do I accept that a biometric captured and put on the database is owned for ever by the individual—the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre or anyone else—any more than a photograph is owned by an individual. 
I am sure that plenty of photographs of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough are copyrighted and are the intellectual property of anyone but him. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary was told that he could not use a rather fetching photograph of him playing football on Wigan borough council property in his election address because it was Wigan borough council's photograph of Wigan borough council property. Happily, he did not need the photograph in the end, but whether he was in it or not was irrelevant: it was council property and he could not use it. I therefore do not accept those points. 
I will try to resist using the canard phraseology, but we are not selling the right to verify the information to anyone, private sector or otherwise. We are charging the private sector and others for the right to verify what is held on the database about the individual who is in front of them and purporting to be such and such a person. That is slightly different from saying that we are selling in any way, shape or form the right to verify—the phrase of the hon. and learned Gentleman—anything on the database. The language is important.

Edward Garnier: I am sorry that the Under-Secretary could not use the photograph of him playing football. There is a distinction between the ownership of the piece of paper with the photographic image and the copyright—the intellectual property—and the right to reproduce. However, that is a separate issue. I am worried not about the photograph on the card but about the intellectual property rights to the information that is represented by the card and stored on the database. I need to be assured that the Government understand that there is distinction between owning blood—I am talking about my blood—and the information on the biometric that is taken from me. Does that belong to me or to the Government?

Tony McNulty: The point has been well made. Of course, we understand the difference between intellectual property rights, paper and other matters. However, let us go back: who owns the intellectual  property rights of the hon. and learned Gentleman's address? He does not. I do not. That is a key piece of data on the database. To pursue the argument on his terms, who owns the intellectual property rights of the hon. and learned Gentleman's name? I do not understand what ownership means in that regard. We are discussing what is essentially public domain information. As for the prescribed bit and those who would buy the verification service from the registration service, many elements are not prescribed. I have no copyright on ''Tony McNulty''. I have no copyright on 3 November 1958. I have no copyright on 114 Kenmore Avenue, Kenton, Harrow, Middlesex HA3 7PW. They are not matters that are covered by intellectual property rights.

Alistair Carmichael: I caution the Minister against going down that road because, apart from anything else, we are in danger of straying off the Bill. If the hon. and learned Member for Harborough were to choose another name by which he wished to be known, which would be his right, and he then wished to copyright that name, he could acquire ownership of the intellectual property rights.

Tony McNulty: Some people do that, of course, and need to do so in pursuance of their trade or profession. Cheerfully, as far as I am aware, MPs do not require that, and nor do most people. The hon. Gentleman is right. Some names are duly copyrighted and are the name of the company under which an individual trades. We shall not return to whether Elton John is Elton John or Reg Dwight, an earlier subject. We have also said that, in the main, if they do not involve the reissuing of a subsequent card, updates are free. All the points that the hon. Gentleman makes about damage, things being damaged, destroyed or lost and other elements are covered, and we shall discuss them—albeit by regulation, I fully accept—when we reach clause 13.
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman should use his Liberal Democrat card for scraping his windows, not the ID card. Even at this stage, the value of the ID card is certainly higher than that of a Liberal Democrat card. The point about ownership of the card is that it is a Government scheme, which is underpinned with the Government's integrity and, in that context, an important part of the scheme—the card—should, to avoid confusion, be retained by the Government. 
People in this Room do not own their passports. It says inside a passport that it remains the property of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and may be withdrawn at any time. No sinister reasons are involved but, purely for simplicity, the issuing of ID cards and the maintenance and integrity of the system as a whole is the responsibility of the Secretary of State. We believe it appropriate that the cards should remain the property of the Government in those terms. 
The side issues that we have discussed in respect of the intellectual property rights of the database are interesting but not terribly germane to the argument. I understand that they were used to make a point. As I  said, nothing sinister is involved. I know that such words from a Minister are more likely to rile people than settle their objections, but I strongly contend that the amendment is entirely unnecessary. We have had an interesting discussion, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

Alistair Carmichael: The point about passports is interesting, but perhaps it relates more to the basis on which the passport was originally issued rather than to the form it will take. I recall some blurb on the front page about Her Britannic Majesty requiring those required to do so to allow the bearer safe passage, or something of that ilk. That is very different from ID cards. No biometric information would have been held for a passport. If one goes back far enough, I imagine that a passport would not even have had a photograph. I do not know, in all honesty, but that is another document that is issued by royal prerogative rather than by an Act of Parliament.
The question of intellectual property rights is not a red herring exactly, but it is certainly a shade of pink. I caution the Minister against pursuing that as a parallel, because some parallels in intellectual property law can work both ways. Ministers might also want to reconsider this matter in the summer months, as might the Liberal Democrats come the autumn. Accordingly, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. 
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Nick Palmer: I beg to move amendment No. 193, in clause 8, page 7, line 23, after 'must', insert 'on request'.

Roger Gale: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 45, in clause 8, page 7, line 32, leave out subsection (6) and insert—
'(6) An ID card relating to an individual is not to be issued except where— 
(a) an application has been made by him to be entered in the Register; or 
(b) an application has been made by him which in the prescribed manner confirms (with or without changes) the contents of an entry already made in the Register for that individual.'. 
No. 157, in clause 8, page 7, line 38, leave out subsection (7).

Nick Palmer: Again, I am anxious not to take up the time allotted to the Opposition, as we have only 11 hours and 45 minutes until the end of the debate. Very briefly, we have established that although the register might be compulsory in due course, people will not be required to use the ID card that will be issued under subsection (4).
Amendment No. 193, which is intended to be probing, raises the question whether there is any point in insisting on issuing the card if the individual tells us that he intends never to use it.

Alistair Carmichael: Amendment No. 157, which is in my name, would have the effect of leaving out subsection (7). It seeks to break the link between prescribed documents, whether those documents are passports or anything else that turns out to be prescribed in the course of things, and ID cards. Again, it is for the Government to explain why they  insist so strongly on the link being made in this way. Surely if the scheme is not compulsory, it should be open to the individual to say, ''Thank you very much for the offer of an identity card with my passport, but I choose not to have one.''

Edward Garnier: Broadly the same points can be made about amendment No. 45, and I look forward to the Government's explanation of the thinking behind subsection (6).

Andy Burnham: And I look forward to all further considerations of amendments being so quickly dispatched.
Amendment No. 45 would remove the distinction in subsection (6) between an application for an ID card and an application to be entered in, or to confirm an entry on, the register. An application for an ID card can usually be made only in conjunction with an application to be entered in, or to confirm an entry on, the register. There is a good reason for the wording of subsection (6). As hon. Members will now know, it reflects the whole structure of the legislation and quite rightly deals separately with an entry in the register and the issue of an identity card. From the beginning, the Bill lays out that structure, with the creation of a register and the issuing of an ID card. It is right to preserve that distinction. 
Although it would not be open to an individual applying to be entered on the register to opt not to have an ID card, I reassure members of the Committee that there are circumstances in which a person may be entered on the register but may not be provided with an ID card. The circumstances are not entirely those of a general wish not to be issued with an ID card, which the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland envisaged. 
Clause 8(4) enables the Secretary of State to prescribe cases in which a person would not be issued with an ID card, notwithstanding the fact that they are entitled to be registered and may be on the register. For example, the power may be used as a means of protecting vulnerable people who may be liable to have their card misused by others. Conversely, clause 8(5) allows an ID card to be issued to someone who is not entitled to be registered but about whom facts are recorded on the register. For instance, they could be a failed asylum seeker, about whom it would make sense from an immigration point of view to retain information if the person had left the country. 
In practice, an application to be registered and an application for an ID card will probably be made on a combined form. I want to reassure Opposition Members that there is no intention to create two processes; it is one and the same form and process. However, there is a distinction between applying to be on the register and applying to be issued with an ID card. 
Amendment No. 193, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe, would require an individual to request an ID card rather than receive one when they were entered on the register. It would have a similar effect to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. Amendment No. 92, tabled  by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, would delete in its entirety clause 8(7).

Edward Garnier: I think that the Under-Secretary is confused. I have not tabled any such amendment, as my amendment is amendment No. 45. We are still debating clause 8, and my amendment would delete clause 8(6) at line 32 on page 7.

Andy Burnham: My apologies. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland moved an amendment to delete subsection (7). The combined effect of the amendments and what people are pushing for is that individuals could opt not to have an ID card, notwithstanding the fact that they were entered on to the register. I can understand why that point has been made, but it would limit the efficacy of the scheme.
The register and the issuing of ID cards go hand in hand. If ID cards were an optional extra, the delivery of the purposes set out in clause 1 would be severely undermined, because there would be a mixture of people with ID cards and those without. That touches on a point made by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre: if organisations are going to plan to use cards and readers, it is reasonable for them to expect that all people will carry a card and that there will be no distinction between those people who carry one and some who do not. 
Identity verification would require a different process for somebody who did not have a card but was on the register, as opposed to somebody who carried a card. It would disincentivise organisations in the private and the public sectors from making use of the scheme, because checks on people who have no card could be made only by using a biometric reader. That would lead to the sort of costs to which the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre referred. In the flash-and-go society of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, it might be useful for some businesses for the card to be used in that way. The sale of alcohol is an obvious example of where a quick physical check of the card—at a local off-licence or pub, for example—would probably be sufficient; people might not want to conduct a greater check. However, there might be other situations in which a higher standard of check is required. 
We are moving towards a compulsory scheme—that is the type of scheme that the Government have in mind. In those circumstances, it would make sense for everyone to be a cardholder, excluding those who might be vulnerable if they were issued with a card; for instance, people with learning difficulties might be prone to having their card taken from them. Online checks could be made, but that is a slower process and it might have to be done in conjunction with some form of paper identification provided by the individual concerned, and we believe that in those circumstances the potential for fraud is higher. 
For those reasons, in the scheme that the Government propose, the issuing of cards and the entry on to the register are two important elements that serve the same objective. We do not think that it is right to move from our system by introducing an opt-in to have an identity card. Although I understand  why my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe envisages such a scheme, we think it is right to have a scheme whereby ID cards are issued to all people on the register. I urge my hon. Friend to withdraw the amendment.

Nick Palmer: I am grateful for the Under-Secretary's lucid explanation of why the Bill is as it is. I wish to reserve my position on this subject so that I may, perhaps, raise it again when we address detailed legislation on how the cards are issued. I note that the Under-Secretary has said that in prescribed cases exceptions could be made. As we have had a useful discussion, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Roger Gale: I have looked into this matter very carefully, and I should state that there is no further opportunity under this clause to debate matters relating to costs and charges. That debate arose from a tabled amendment that has been defeated, and it does not relate directly to the clause as it stands. The other issues arising from clause 8 have been amply debated under other selected amendments. Therefore, I propose to put the clause directly to the Committee.
The Chairman, being of the opinion that the principle of the clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in the course of debate on the amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put the Question, pursuant to Standing Orders Nos. 68 and 89, That the clause stand part of the Bill:— 
The Committee divided: Ayes 8, Noes 5.

Question accordingly agreed to. 
Clause 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Alistair Carmichael: I do not wish to press amendment No.162.

Clause 9 - Renewal of ID cards for those compulsorily registered

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Edward Garnier: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman did not find it necessary to move the amendment. To some extent, we discussed the penalties in an earlier debate, but it is important that we should briefly discuss whether clause 9 should be part of the Bill. I place in parentheses my usual complaint about the enabling nature of the Bill, which produces all these unseen  powers. That is worth saying on every occasion so that nobody is in any doubt about the point. The aspect of the clause that I want to touch on relates to subsections (3), (4) and (5).
Subsection (3) says that 
''Where an individual applies for an ID card in pursuance of this section, the Secretary of State may require him to do such one or more of the things specified in subsection (4) as the Secretary of State thinks fit for the purpose of— 
(a) verifying information provided for the purposes of the application; or 
(b) otherwise ensuring that there is a complete, up-to-date and accurate entry about that individual in the Register.''
So far, almost so good, even though the subsection provides the Secretary of State with unmeasured powers. 
Under subsection (4), the Secretary of State can require the individual 
''(a) to attend at a specified place and time''.
We dealt with the point about distance and difficult access in an earlier debate. The Secretary of State can also require the individual 
''(b) to allow his fingerprints, and other biometric information about himself, to be taken and recorded''.
To some extent, we touched on that point, although we may return to it. The Secretary of State can also require the individual 
''(c) to allow himself to be photographed''.
That does not necessarily mean that the individual must be photographed by an agent of the state. When one gets a passport, one can go to a public photograph booth, where not only the property and the paper but the copyright and the image belong to the individual and not to the Government. However, it may be implied as part of the contract of getting a passport that one passes ownership of the paper and copyright of the photograph to Her Majesty for the purpose of securing a passport and all that goes with it. 
The subsection that particularly concerns me is (4)(d), which says that the individual is 
''otherwise to provide such information as may be required by the Secretary of State.''
That could mean absolutely anything. Clearly there is a scheme behind it. No doubt, in due course some regulation will be put before us for consideration. As yet, we do not know what on earth subsection (4)(d) could comprise. 
The matter is all the worse because people who contravene that requirement could 
''be liable to a civil penalty not exceeding £1,000.''
We have had an argument about civil and criminal penalties. The points still stand. How can it be right for a Government to legislate that a Secretary of State can do anything and that if people do not comply they will be fined £1,000? I do not like that sort of society. I do not like this sort of legislation. 
It is not good enough for the Government to say, ''We will sort the matter out in due course and everything will be fine.'' It will not be. Before they force clause 9 on Parliament and on the people of this  country, the Government should condescend to be more specific than they have been in the Bill.

Alistair Carmichael: I shall be brief. I bring the attention of the Committee to subsection (2), which states:
''If the individual— 
(a) holds a valid ID card that is due to expire within the prescribed period; 
 or 
(b) does not hold a valid ID card, 
he must apply for one within the prescribed period.''
Given the earlier discussion, I would be grateful to know what the Government intend that prescribed period to be.

Tony McNulty: For all the feigned outrage of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, those items, especially the ones that he referred to directly, simply replicate the application process that we dealt with in some detail under clause 5. In that regard, clause 5(5) is exactly the same as clause 9(4) in each of its elements.
The clause is about the renewal of ID cards and one would rather hope that the renewal of the cards would follow the same process as the initial application and issue of the cards. 
Unless technology takes off in leaps and bounds, there will not be little photo-me booths up and down the country where people can get their biometric data before they tootle off to the ID card application store and lay that before those who process the cards, as we do with passport photos. The clause is about renewal and it is right and proper that it replicates the situation as it stands. 
The hon. and learned Gentleman is a learned gentleman and he knows fine well that the phrase 
''otherwise to provide such information as may be required by the Secretary of State''
does not mean everything and anything that the Secretary of State fancies, but rather it means information in the context of the Bill and the processes outlined in it. It meant that in clause 5 and it means it again here. The process for the renewal of an ID card must be the same as that followed when applying. That is all that clause 9 seeks to achieve. 
As the clause refers to those who are compulsorily registered, there must be some civil penalty sanction if the renewal is not forthcoming, and that is all that clause 9(5) will provide. I appreciate the fact that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is not moving his previous amendment, because we have gone through precisely the civil and criminal arguments. Nothing untoward can be found in subsection (4)(a), (b), (c) or (d) other than the overwhelming fact that if one is against the process, one is against the process; if one is against clause 5, where those words first appeared in the Bill, one will be against them in clause 9. However, we need that coherence and the application and renewal process should be the same.

Edward Garnier: I am grateful to the Minister. My concern about the Bill is not feigned; it is genuine and is shared by millions of my fellow citizens. We did not  have an opportunity to deal with the equivalent section of clause 5 because the knife fell after the debate on amendment No. 133. As far as I can recall, we did not have a stand part debate on clause 5.

Alistair Carmichael: The Minister may recall that I asked him what he intended the prescribed periods under subsection (2) to be. Unless I missed it, I do not think that he has told us.

Tony McNulty: Purely for the theatrics, I should have stood up because the hon. and learned Gentleman was intervening on me, and then sat down so that the hon. Gentleman could intervene. That is by the by, however.
The prescribed period under clause 9 is a matter of policy that is yet to be determined. It is enabling legislation and we will come back to the parliamentary process to determine that. I am sorry that I missed that question the first time round. 
Question put and agreed to. 
Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10 - Functions of persons issuing designated documents

Alistair Carmichael: I beg to move amendment No. 163, in clause 10, page 9, line 9, leave out subsection (2).
Again, we are seeking to break the link between designated documents and— 
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. 
On resuming—

Alistair Carmichael: I cannot remember what I said before we were interrupted, although I had not said an awful lot and I certainly do not have an awful lot to say.
The basis of the amendment is to break the link between designated documents and the identity card. Clause 10(2) states: 
''A designated documents authority which issues a designated document to an individual who does not hold a valid ID card must ensure that the document is issued together with an ID card satisfying the prescribed requirements.''
On a number of occasions today, I have expressed the view that the link between identity cards and prescribed documents is not healthy. As I have said already, it is compulsion by stealth.

Tony McNulty: I commend the hon. Gentleman on both his honesty and brevity. I commend his honesty because he is entirely right in his own terms, and he has been consistent in seeking to break the link between designated documents and ID cards. It will not be news to him that we consider that link fundamental to what we are trying to do with this Bill and scheme, and that we shall strongly resist his amendment.
As I suggested earlier, there is a lot more talking to be done about which documents will be designated. We know for certain that biometric passports will be  designated when they are introduced. Other designated documents may include driving licences, Criminal Records Bureau checks and so on. However, if we are to eschew the notion of the ID cards being big-bang, one-hit and all compulsory at the one time, we feel that proceeding via designated documents, particularly passports, is the way through. 
I say in the most gentle of terms, given what we are trying to do with the Bill and the scheme in this form, that this is a malevolent wrecking amendment that should be resisted by the Committee. I commend the hon. Gentleman for his honesty and brevity, and in seeking to share and reflect that brevity and honesty, I strongly urge the Committee to resist this malevolent, nasty little amendment.

Patrick Mercer: I need say little more than has already been said. We are seeking to break the link between the card and the designated document. I do not need to expand on the words of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. However unpleasant the amendment may be, we certainly support the aim of removing subsection (2).

Alistair Carmichael: It must be one of the most overcooked canards of the day to say that if this had been a wrecking amendment, it would not have been in order. It would not have been selected, and you, Mr. Gale, would have reminded us of that.
I am quite happy for my amendment to be malevolent. To use the Minister's own terms, this is a nasty little Bill. Yet again, I have sought to assist the Government in improving the Bill; yet again the Minister has failed to see the wisdom of my amendment. However, I am confident that, as is always the case with being a Liberal, time will show that I was correct, and that we shall see what nonsense this Bill is in the fullness of time. For the moment, however, I realise that I am on to a loser, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. 
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. 
Clause 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill. 
Further consideration adjourned.—[Joan Ryan.] 
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes past Ten o'clock till Thursday 14 July at quarter-past Nine o'clock.